#APOCALYPSE!AU

[runariya]

🥸🤫☠️

zombie!jjk x human!reader where zombie roaming around abandon island and found human...

(yandere+smut+apocalypse) part of the prompt game pairing: zombie!Jungkook x survivor!female reader genre: apocalypse!AU, zombie!AU, S2"L", yandere, angst, smut warnings: angst, survival on an island, yandere, explicit sexual content, breast play, unprotected sex, squirting,, lmk if I forgot smth word count: 2.328

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You’re not sure how you got this far. Not really.

The island’s quiet, apart from the rustling of waves against the rocks and the occasional cry of some bird in the distance. It’s the kind of quiet that grates at your nerves, gets under your skin, makes your thoughts run wild until you’re staring at shadows that aren’t there.

Not that it matters, you think. The only thing worse than shadows that aren’t real is the knowledge that there are real monsters out there, ones that used to look like you, talk like you. Ones that will tear you apart if they catch you slipping.

You sit on the sand, knees pulled up to your chest, and squint at the horizon. Nothing but water as far as the eye can see. There’s no way off this place. No boats, no planes, no rescue missions. You’d counted yourself lucky to have found it at all, back when you still had the energy for such things.

But it’s been weeks now. Maybe months. And luck’s gone sour. The supplies you’d scavenged are almost gone, and every day it feels like the island is shrinking a bit more. 

The quiet’s the worst of it, though. It’s loud enough to make you jump at nothing, loud enough to leave you wishing for the kind of noise you’d sworn you’d never want to hear again.

Not this kind of noise, though.

The sound of shuffling and low, wet breathing.

It freezes you where you sit, your heart kicking in your chest like a dying engine. You tell yourself it’s your imagination, that there’s no way, no way anything could’ve followed you here. But the sound grows louder, scuff of footsteps against sand, and you know you’re not alone.

You should move. Run, hide, something. But you’re cemented to the spot, fear pinning you in place like a fucking corpse on a spike, and when you finally manage to turn your head, he’s already there.

The first thing you notice is his eyes.

Dark. Too dark. Not the milky, empty gaze you’ve come to expect from the infected, but different entirely. Like shadows sucking everything in, swallowing whatever light they might’ve had.

He’s tall, broad-shouldered, and eerily human, except for the faint grey tinge to his skin, the cracks along his arms and neck, like porcelain left out in a storm.

You know exactly what he is, but you can’t stop staring.

He’s handsome. That’s the part that catches even yourself off guard. No rotting flesh, no slack jaw or hollowed-out face. His hair is dark, long enough to curl at their tips, and his bottom lip is full, though they’re pressed into a tight, almost pained line.

His clothes are ripped and stained, clinging to his muscular frame, and you notice the claws at his fingertips, black and sharp.

Then he moves, and you snap back to reality with a jolt.

“Shit,” you hiss, scrambling to your feet and stumbling backwards.

He doesn’t lunge at you. Doesn’t even bare his teeth. He just tilts his head, watching you with those black, round eyes, like he’s studying you.

“What do you want?” you snap, even though you know it’s pointless. He’s not going to answer.

But then he does.

“I found you.” His voice is low, rough even, like it hasn’t been used in a long time.

You take another step back, your hands shaking from the wave of adrenaline drowning you. “Stay away from me.”

He doesn’t listen. Of course he doesn’t as he takes a step closer, like if he’s testing the waters. 

“Stay—” Your voice cracks, but you don’t have time to fix it, because suddenly he’s in front of you, faster than you can blink.

His hand shoots out, engulfing your wrist hard enough to make you wince, but thankfully not hard enough to break anything. His skin is cold, but not too cold, not dead. You don’t understand how that’s possible.

“You’re not running,” he states, his head tilting again. There’s something almost curious in his tone, but you’re too scared to pay it any real attention.

“Let go,” you snarl, trying to wrench your arm free, but his grip doesn’t ease up.

His other hand rises now too, clawed fingers brushing against your cheek in a way that makes you want to recoil. But you don’t. You can’t.

“You’re soft,” he murmurs, more to himself than to you. “Warm.”

“Yeah, well, you’re not,” you bite out.

His lips twitch, and for a moment you think he might smile.

“You’re mine.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“I found you. You’re mine.”

You laugh, but it’s more out of panic than anything. “That’s not how it works, buddy.”

He leans in closer, and you can feel his breath against your skin. “It is now.”

You want to push him away, to scream or fight or do something, but all you can do is stare into his eyes.

And then he lets go.

You stumble back, clutching your wrist like it might’ve been burned, even though the only thing you feel is the ghost of his touch. He doesn’t move to follow you, but his eyes stay locked on yours.

“Don’t run,” is he warning you? Pleasing?

You glare at him, though it feels pointless. “Why shouldn’t I?”

His head tilts again, and there’s that almost-smile, like he knows something you don’t. “Because I’ll catch you.”

You want to tell him he’s full of shit. You want to tell him he’s wrong, that you’ve survived this long because you don’t get caught.

But you don’t.

Because deep down, you know he’s right.

That’s how it starts. That’s how it ends. 

He doesn’t leave after that. No, he follows you wherever you go. He’s not always close, sometimes you catch glimpses of him at the fringe of the treeline, watching you like some predator waiting for the right moment to strike.

But he doesn’t. Not yet, anyway.

You try to ignore him at first. Pretend he’s not there, focus on scavenging what little food you can find and rationing your water. But it’s impossible. You can feel his eyes on you, always watching, always waiting.

It should terrify you. It does terrify you. But it’s not just fear that keeps you up at night. It’s something else.

Something you don’t want to admit to yourself.

You tell yourself it’s just survival instinct, just your brain trying to make sense of the impossible. But it’s not that simple.

He’s too human. That’s the problem.

When you see him up close, when you hear his voice, low and rasping and somehow still fucking captivating, it’s like your mind forgets what he is. Or maybe it just doesn’t care.

He’s still dangerous. You know that. You see it in the way he moves, in the sharpness of his claws, in the flicker of primal instinct in his dark eyes.

But he doesn’t hurt you.

He could, and you know it. You’re not stupid. He could tear you apart in seconds if he wanted to, but he doesn’t. He watches. And waits. And when he does speak, his voice is calm, almost gentle.

It’s not normal. Nothing about this is normal.

But normal doesn’t exist anymore. 

The world’s gone to shit, and you’re stranded on a fucking island with a zombie who looks at you like you’re the only thing that matters.

And maybe you’re starting to believe your own thoughts, or is it him? 

The first time you let him get close, it’s not because you want to. It’s because you don’t have a choice.

You’re sitting by the fire you’ve managed to build as the nights turned colder, a small thing that barely keeps the cold at bay, when you hear the sound of his footsteps approaching. 

You don’t even flinch anymore. You know it’s him, so why would you bother? 

He doesn’t say anything as he just lowers himself to the ground a few feet away from you, maybe wanting some warmth too. 

“What do you want?”

His unblinking eyes meet yours. “You.”

You divert your gaze to the flames, though your heart betrays you by skipping a beat. “Yeah, well, tough luck. I’m not exactly available.”

He taps his claws against his thigh, and there’s that almost-smile again. “You will be.”

It’s not a threat. It should feel like one, but it doesn’t. Is it a promise? You can’t tell. 

And you hate that some part of you doesn’t hate it. You hate that, even though he’s not fully human, you feel drawn to him, crave his proximity, even his touch. You reason it’s because of your isolation, because of the many days and months spent without any sort of affection.

You know that sooner or later your time will come, that this island is your final destination. So why wouldn’t you seize the opportunity to just feel again?

With a heavy sigh, you get up, trying to quieten down your doubts and everything in between as you make your way over to the zombie, his eyes following you curiously.

No longer letting your mind intervene, you get down on your knees right before him, hands shakily landing on his knees, gauging his reaction. But he doesn’t flinch, doesn’t speak, just watches you like always does. And so, with a deep breath that not only fills your lungs but seems to expand your whole chest, you do what you never expected to do.

Crawling forward, you settle carefully on his lap, unable to look away from the dark voids of his eyes as his hands rest on your waist, squeezing just a little, as if to reassure you this is fine. That this is normal.

You let yourself think it is, that he’s human, that he wants you just as much as you want him. And as you lean forward, your whole body trembling with adrenaline or want, you’re not sure which, his lips part the moment yours find his.

Their warmth and plushness send your mind into a frenzy, letting you give in completely. With one silent moan escaping your lips, he pushes his tongue into your mouth, black claws ripping your already torn clothes to shreds in seconds, letting the tatters fall around you.

You try to do the same, clawing at his clothes to feel his skin on yours, but it’s in vain. Survival has stripped you of your energy, leaving you too weak to even tear the most fragile fabric in two.

The zombie grunts when your cunt grinds hard against his cock, and with that, he rips his own clothes away, lifting you slightly to adjust you just right on his lap. His skin doesn’t look as grey in the warm orange dance of the flames as it does in sunlight, something you’re oddly grateful for.

“Taste so good,” the zombie mumbles as he licks and kisses down your throat, ending his journey at your tits. You both get lost in his ministrations while you’re only able to ride your weeping cunt on his rock-hard cock, fingers weaving through his soft hair. 

You should fear his black claws as they squeeze your tits together or scrape lightly against your skin, but you don’t. Not because you’re blind to the danger, but because you feel how careful he is, how utterly tender and mindful he’s being, as if he’s afraid to break you.

That thought alone sends another wave of arousal coursing through you, showing just how desperate you’ve become, desperate for touch, desperate for this zombie to fuck you senseless.

Lifting his head with both hands, his lips unnaturally rosy and swollen, you crash into him again, starved for love, for affection, for anything remotely human that the world has stripped away, not only from you but from him as well.

The zombie lifts you easily with one hand, aligning his leaking fat cock without breaking the kiss. Frantic breaths mingle as he pushes you down, spearing you in a way you never thought possible.

“Yes,” you cry out, full of ecstasy as the stretch burns so sweetly. His moans and grunts, sounds you didn’t know you needed, only fuel your desire.

And while you try your best to ride him, both of you know how weak you’ve become, how fragile you are. His pace is inhuman as he lies back and thrusts upward, but you wouldn’t expect anything less.

The sight of him below you, biceps, pecs, and abs flexing with every pump, the jiggling of your tits in the corner of your vision, it’s enough to push you over the edge. Your orgasm spills over him and onto the sand, leaving you trembling but unable to stop meeting his thrusts halfway. 

“Fuck,” the zombie groans, looking more human than ever as his eyes glow in the firelight, reflecting not only the flames but your body too.

You can’t tell how long he fucks you, how long this desperate and delirious paradise lasts, but you don’t mind. You don’t mind him not stopping, don’t mind feeling dehydrated from the multiple orgasms paralysing you until you collapse on top of him.

You don’t mind when he steals your breath with his tongue, don’t mind that he’s imprinting the shape of his cock into your cunt permanently.

Because when he comes, filling you with burning hot cum until you feel like you might burst, you’re at peace. So content, so spent, that you forget who you are and who he is.

The quiet doesn’t bother you as you lie on his chest, his heartbeat the only thing you need to feel less alone.

But eventually, the calm in your mind has to make room for the survival instincts you’ve relied on for so long. It has to, because the next words you hear sound utterly insane.

“You’re finally mine, ___.”

And yes, you’re insane, you’ve lost your mind, because when you startle upright, the zombie is human.

••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

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[goddesspharo]

When the world ends, collect your things. You're coming with me.

[princessbrunette]

can’t stop thinking about all the little ways apocalypse!johnb displays casual dominance.

it’s the little things, like the hand he always seems to have on the back of your neck. it’s gentle most times, standing around the camp together with the warm caress of his palm cupping the tepid skin there, rubbing a thumb along the bottom of your scalp whilst he listens to pope talk about the control tower updates. you like it, it makes you feel held without making a big scene of things. love and pda was a touchy subject now that so many people had lost someone, or were just suffering from loneliness so you didn’t wanna rub it in everyone’s faces that you’d found eachother. the gentle touch keeps you near to him, the way he likes it.

john b just does things for you to help get you ready and speed the day along. something you notice, is the way he’ll lay out an outfit for you on a cold winter morning as you stand there in pyjamas all puffy and half awake, watching in silence as you adapt to being conscious. you’re sure it’s roughly 6AM — but he’s moving around quickly throwing your things together so he can take you out into the woods within the fences and reach you how to shoot. you can tell the visage of sarah’s passing still haunts him, which is why he gets these random trauma fuelled bouts of sudden desperation to teach you to protect yourself, just incase. you pout grumpily because when it was john b who was dressing you, he would never let you dress cute during the literal end of the world. you’d mutter out something about it ‘stifling your creativity’ which he’d ignore as he starts to pull your pyjamas off to help you change. he’d pile warm layers on warm layers that would keep you comfortable in the morning chill which was honestly sweet — given that he was dressing you like a little teddy bear in those fuzzy sweaters, thick jeans and boots that you’d replaced the laces with ribbons. you didn’t really mind, not at all.

aside from this, he doesn’t let you come anywhere that he deems too dangerous — meaning it was rare you ever got to leave the gates to kitty hawk — no matter how often you whined about it. “look, okay — the answer is no. you’re not coming. no way.” he was hard on you because he cares, and felt it was his duty to keep you safe.

when he eventually lets you out with him he’s practically got you on a leash, gripping you by the shoulders and lecturing you if you take a step too far. he mellows out if it really does feel safe, only pulling you back towards him to bring his water bottle to your mouth, mopping you up when some dribbles out. “need to stay hydrated, okay — can’t afford to have you passing out.”

when you stop listening or go into your occasional daydream, john b isn’t afraid to check you. especially if it was important. you’d zoned out while jj stands before the entire camp, briefing all the campers you’d collected on some new weapons that had arrived from a successful supply hunt. he was the weapons master after all, so he really knew his stuff. you knew john b was stood at your side with that same tense look, brow creased and arms folded — but when you begin staring off at the treeline his attention turns to you, unfolding his arms to lightly grip your chin to point it back to the front. “listen up. this is no joke.” he’d warn.

overall, he’s mega patient with you. as you might imagine, you’re always thrilled to see him when he comes home from a long supply hunt or anywhere really that he had to travel to, which sometimes can take up to a week. john b, being the guy he is always has some kind of news to tell the group — so usually he barrels back through the doors immediately talking at everyone with this new information. this of course doesn’t stop you from running to his side and throwing your arms around him. the routledge boys flow state remains unbroken, continuing to ramble at the group as his hand rubs your lower back, letting you cuddle into his side. you knew he’d give you his full attention later on, laying with you quietly talking on the hammocks outside your shared cabin — but for now you didn’t mind. sometimes the casual nonchalance turned you on.

his dominance can shine through in real gentle ways sometimes — your boyfriend squatting down infront of you when you’re sat on the floor of your shared little cabin, cleaning his weapons for him wearing your dirty little white nightgown that you’d scouted on one of your few supply runs. his knees click when they bend and he’s a little tired looking but he smiles big anyway when he brings his backpack to his front, rifling through it until he pulls out a new girly trinket he’d found for you on a trip. you’re unsure as to whether or not he’s talking so gently because he’s exhausted — or because he’s just so sweet on you but he holds your gift up and barely raises his volume to say “hey, got you something. do you like it sweetheart? found it just for you ‘cause you’d been so good this week bubba.”

he often comforts you when you get upset over him returning home with a dead rabbit slung over his shoulders. “okay, oh god — you were not meant to see that.” he deadpans when you catch him in the act — but soon he’s got you scooped up on his lap (with the rabbit cooking outside over a fire) as he rocks you back and forth. “look, we have to eat sweetheart. i swear i didn’t wanna kill that bunny but we don’t have much choice right now. you can close your eyes the whole time. i’m gonna feed it to you. okay?”

of course, some dominance is just far from casual — like when he’d return from a pharmacy run during the week with his pockets stuffed with condoms so he can put your legs over his shoulders and stuff your aching cunt. “i know baby, i know it’s— it’s definitely been a while. haven’t been able to find protection i can trust literally anywhere but i’ve got heaps now, so i can fuck that sweet little pussy the way you want. i know you missed it sweet girl, i know.”

[emoboymeow]

I really love the whole apocalypse/zombie-apocalypse theme, it all seems super aesthetic to me.🌹

[1800titz]

Potential…. apocalypse AU… maybe coming to patreon this week?

The wagging flame dances in the gloam of his eyes. Molten. Flinty with burnt orange— unwavering. Staid, despite his next words.

They’re blunt. Crude. Tit for tat, verbalized with the same indifference of handing cash over a counter—

(Nobody rides coattails, anymore, not in this world. Quid pro quo— a transactional proposition of his offer, days ago.)

“I think it’s about time you suck my cock.”

Her mouthful gets stuck to the back of her throat. Clogs her windpipe, on her gasp, until she’s coughing, twisted, spewing kidney beans onto the loam. Y/N wipes the back of her shuddering hand against her mouth, rheumy-eyed.

(And it’d be a shit denouement, wouldn’t it? Quietus, at the edge of a rotting world, choking on her food.)

His eyes list. The fork scrapes the bottom of the can— a portentous, hollowed click of metal on metal. “…Don’t you think?”

Her face spumes with heat, the back of her throat still raw, closing (on the words that bubble there, tangled).

Until, finally— “Sorry?”

“…Quid pro quo. I—“

Detached negotiation— a trade in the esse of …whatever she can offer, sloppy and slick. And that’s the pinnacle of mutualism, today, isn’t it? When mankind disintegrates and reverts, the raw remnants are what they are at the core; ironclad— animals.

“Feed you. Keep you warm. Give you a place to rest your head for the night. And you…”

There’s stardust in the glint of his teeth. Bared in the proxy of something friendly, when really, maybe, they just ache to snap and consume. The constellation of her purpose, unfulfilled, in the film over his heady eyes. Jet polynyas, blown. Mirrors for the fire when his voice croons in a honeyed char, treacle over embers—

And, that’s the thing, isn’t it? What her cosmos dealt to her— him, in the ashy nebula of existence.

“You give me the view of a pretty girl between my legs. A wet mouth on my cock.”

[arcane-vagabond]

I did a thing last night and made four different moodboards for Hatch

Bonus Tyler moodboard

Read We Abide.

[assassins-and-hidden-blades]

Hello, friends!

[espresso-lessdepresso]

First Contact || Apocalypse!au Jschlatt

a/n: 1. The Last of Us Universe 2. Sorry to the girls and gays this has no kissing whatsoever, quite lacking in any intimacy really 3. The ravioli is only in here because TLOU had it as well.

t/w: Mention of death. Mention of dying. Stealing. Weapons. Guns. Fire. Zombies. Infected. Blood. Blood wound. Wounded reader. Needles. Stitches. Reader gets stitches. Distrust. Suspicion. 

w/c: 3.6k

Cans of food, empty containers, rope, forgotten ammo and maybe a lone deer if you were lucky.

It was meant to only be a small run for some supplies. You would have gotten what you needed and left the rest for some rainy day. The town you frequented was small and it was supposed to be empty, its residents had long since been evacuated. And probably shot down by FEDRA soldiers, from what you had heard, to prevent any more from getting infected and roaming the earth. You were in someone's old house, packing up cans of food, medical supplies and other items when you heard the sound of glass crunching. Before you knew it, an infected emerged from behind a broken-down wall and lunged at you. As you dodged and shot at its head till it dropped dead, more came.

A whole horde. As fucked up as it sounded, they looked fresh. Infected for a few days or weeks. Runners and Stalkers both. Again, the town had been empty since the first few weeks of the outbreak, so you could've only guessed that they somehow migrated to this area. Maybe followed a group of survivors, maybe bit one and infected them before quickly spreading to the others. Runners were bad because if you saw one, there were probably going to be a handful of others nearby. But stalkers? Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. They were smart. They moved fast, they knew how to hide from you and would ambush you and straight up hunt you down like you're their little prey. It didn't help that you needed to use a few extra bullets to take them out.

And it was just your luck that the Molotov cocktail you had fashioned got knocked out of your hand when one of the infected jumped at you, pinning you to the ground. Within seconds, the bottle shattered and the floor was set on fire. The whole building was going to be swallowed by the flames.

After kicking the infected off of you and beating your hatchet into its fungi-covered skull, you crawled on the ground in a coughing fit trying to escape the burning house. Wooden beams fell from the ceiling, crushing a few infected underneath them. The wall beside you collapsed, trapping your lower body beneath its rubble. 

The rest- they flinched and screeched and groaned, but they still made their way towards you.

Black smoke surrounded you. Strokes of fire licked your skin. Breathing had started to hurt and your eyes burned red. All you could see was the blur of lights and the shadows that grew closer.

Fire. 

Smoke.

Infected.

Horde.

....Sounds of gunshots came from somewhere.

You woke up to the dull sound of metal clanking against each other. Blinking your eyes open, you were met with the dark blue sky, littered with specks of small stars. You were in the woods, on a worn-out sleeping bag and laying under a jacket that was far too big to be your own. The sweat had dried on your skin making you feel a bit sticky and tacky. Hours must have passed seeing as how the sun was high when you were in the town. Breathing hurt, every slow inhale you took felt like something was scratching the insides of your lungs and your throat was dry.

Tic tic tic tic... Foosh.

When you turned your head to the side towards the sound, you were met with the sight of a gruff-looking man hunched over a portable gas stove. The fire burned low, on top of which he placed what looked to be a pot of water.

The first thing your eyes darted towards was the head of a rifle poking out from behind his shoulders, hung by a makeshift strap across his torso. Your gaze briefly wandered to the shadow behind him, a pickup truck a few metres away from you. Your eyes went back to him, his face illuminated by the orange light. While he was staring at the water, waiting for it to boil, you could make out the tense expression behind his unkempt brown hair; furrowed brows and chewing on one side of his bottom lip. His clothes were battered and a bit dirty, but who the hell had clean clothes in this world? With the sweater, gloves and boots, he looked well-prepared for the coming winter, keeping his fingers from freezing off. Oh, and the fleece jacket that on top of you was also probably his.

With a flick of your wrist, you sat up and from your back pocket, pulled out your pistol, barrel pointed at the stranger's head. 

Sure, he gave you his sleeping bag and he might have saved you from the infected horde, but that did not mean he was some nice guy you could risk trusting. No one is just nice, especially not these days, not unless they want something from you. For all you knew, he could be a part of some raiders or hunters or bandits or any other fucking club. As if the infected weren't enough, you had to watch out and hide from these types of people. Somehow, they were worse than the infected. If an infected gets you, you're dead. But if you get caught by the raiders or hunters... You'd seen enough people get dragged off to their camps- heard enough screams to know all the horrors they could do to you.

So, you don't know the stranger in front of you. And he sure as hell doesn't know you.

He looked up, seeing the gun pointed at him and he shook his head, letting out a dry chuckle. "Guess I should've left you in that burning shit hole." His fingers came up to scratch his beard nonchalantly, watching you with the most uninterested and unimpressed look on his face. He wasn't the least bit worried about the possibility of having a bullet between his brows.

You didn’t reply. You took a shallow breath and were hit with cramping pain that pinched at your chest and sides. All that smoke you inhaled was probably still in your lungs. Maybe he knew that, as much as you did, you were in no condition to fight him. Even with the gun in your hands, anxiety itching your finger on the trigger, you could tell this guy wasn't someone to mess around with. 

"Your things are over there," He nodded his head a little way to your left, "by the tree." Your backpack and duffle bag were sitting at the base of an old mossy tree, along with your hatchet and empty shotgun. "If you're going to keep pointing that little thing at me, then better you grab your shit and leave without making too much noise." He held his glare at you, tired brown eyes almost turning black, a solid warning that if you tried anything-

You contemplated, giving yourself a chance to think things through. Really, if he wanted to kill and rob you of even the clothes on your back, he would have done all that before nightfall. You were most likely knocked out for five or six hours, four minimum. He had more than enough time to leave you for dead.

A sudden rustling of leaves caught both of your attention, your necks snapped towards the bushes. Before you could think of pulling the trigger and before the stranger could pull the rifle in front of him, an orange cat hopped out of the dark. Its big green eyes glistened in the twilight, as well as the silver army name tag that was fashioned to its collar. The cat trotted towards the man and dropped a rat from its mouth, paying no mind to you, much like its owner. The man's posture went back to its slumped state, his shoulders relaxed and he pushed the rifle back. He murmured something as he scratched the cat behind its ears, to which it meowed back at him. The cat then shifted its focus to the rodent, starting to nip and tear through it.

"Name?" You asked, lowering your pistol, though your finger remained on the grip. 

He looked up, somewhat glad that the person he had saved was no longer going to blow his brains out. Or at least not yet. "Jambo." He said, slightly drawing out 'o' of the name. The cat then looked up at him, curling its orange tail around the man's leg. 

A sigh left your lips. "I wasn't asking about the cat.” You were dumbfounded, almost amused seeing someone bring around with them a pet. This was really the last thing you expected in a world of chaos and fear.

"Oh. Right, of course." He nodded before properly answering. "Schlatt. I uh- I go by Schlatt."

You tried to rack your brain because you swore you had heard that name before. But you couldn't recall why or from where you heard it. With a parched mouth, you gave him your name in return, to which he nodded again with a rather tired and solemn expression.

Deciding that that was more than enough chit-chatting, you went to push yourself off of the sleeping bag. You were about to stand up from a kneeling position when searing hot pain shot up your thigh. For a split second, you were back in that old burning building, the fire and smoke suffocating you and the infected closing in on you. Something popped against your skin. Wincing and staggering, you dropped one hand on the ground to balance yourself as the other hand instantly went to place itself on your leg where you felt the warm tearing sensation. Only then did you notice the bandages wrapped around your thigh and the makeshift ankle brace on the same leg. There was already enough crimson on the white bandages but because you had moved so harshly, a darker red dot started to rise to the surface. You pressed your lips into a thin line, seeing the blotch of fresh blood travel further down the leg of your pants.

"Wait, don’t just-!" Schlatt hissed through his clenched teeth, "You're going to tear your damn stitches." As tall and as big as he was, his footsteps were light and almost undetectable, something he had perfected throughout the years of the outbreak. You didn't realise he was behind you until you heard his voice right next to your ear. He hooked an arm under yours and motioned you to sit back down. With his other hand on your back, you were laying down again on the sleeping bag. "Tch." The bandages were almost soaking at this point like a wet sponge. 

Pulling out a switchblade, Schlatt hastily cut open the wrappings and peeled it off of the wound with the tip of the blade. There is a massive torn hole on the leg of your jeans. Your breath hitched at the sight of several messy stitches crossing over a long and deep gash on your thigh. That popping you felt seconds ago was undoubtedly the snapping and breaking of two or three of these stitches. You could see how deep the cut was with the lighter layer of skin peeking through. The area around the gash was blushing red, inflamed and irritated from all the tension and reopening of the stitches. 

“What the hell, you did this?” Your breath was laboured but you tried to inhale and exhale calmly, your eyes unable to look away from your leg. 

"I was trying to help you!" Schlatt snapped back at you. “But all for nothing I guess, great fucking job bleeding again.” He wasn't the best when it came to any sort of medical aid. Everything he knew he had learned on his own when the time called for it. And fuck, You were bleeding profusely when he found you. He had no other option than to hold your skin together and run a needle through you like it was a piece of cloth. Though now the stitches were popped and he was all out of medical supplies. Schlatt took a quick glance at you, seeing the thin sheet of sweat beginning to form on your forehead from the spike of adrenaline. "Used all my gauze on you, shit..." He pulled out a handkerchief and pressed it against your leg. 

Grunting, you pointed towards your bag and no other words needed to be said after that. Schlatt shuffled both your bags closer and began to quickly look through it for anything useful. His hand landed on a tin box which somewhat resembled a first aid kit and opened it to find a small tube of antiseptic cream and a roll of gauze. He first poured water on the wound, doing his best to clean and dry the area before gingerly applying the cream. Not knowing what to do about the torn stitches, he just left them as they were. With a firm hand, he finally wrapped the bandage tightly around your leg. The bleeding would stop soon enough. 

Minutes later, you were lying on your back again, the pain dully pulsing in your leg. It was sure to slowly make its way to your hips and you knew it would give you one hell of a back pain.

"Now you owe me twice," Schlatt quipped. 

Even though you felt like your already small reserve of energy had dried out, you without missing a beat rolled your eyes at Schlatt, earning you another dry breathy laugh.

Schlatt had moved to sit a bit closer to you, still on the opposite side of the fire but two or three feet apart this time. He pulled the sleeve of his sweatshirt over his fingers and picked up the pot of boiling water to set it on the ground. Before turning off the stove, Schlatt used a few dry leaves and sticks to make a small campfire to light up the area. He poured some of the water into a metal cup and pulled out a piece of folded paper. Unwrapping the paper revealed a few sticks of what looked to be dried jerky. "Here." He placed the cup in front of you and after picking a few sticks for himself, he held out the rest.

Wearily accepting the food, you muttered thanks. 

The two of you ate quietly, tugging at the stick of meat and then taking a sip of water so that you could actually chew and swallow it. The jerky was old and lacked any flavour, tasting more like leather than food. Glancing at your bag, you thought for a second.

At the sound of a zipper opening, followed by rustling, Schlatt cocked an eyebrow as he looked at you. Out of your other bag, you pulled out a red coloured can. Within days of the outbreak, people stormed every mall and shop and cleared out all the shelves. If you weren’t growing it yourself or had some inside source from the FERDA, then food was hard to find. And your luck was thin of finding something that was both edible and rotting. You eyed the can once more before tossing it over to Schlatt.

In a swift motion, Schlatt caught the red can with one hand and brought it close to his face to read the label on it. "Chef Boyardee Beef Ravioli" was printed on the front of the can with the picture of, what Schlatt assumed, the said chef and the ravioli. He rotated the can, running his thumb over the metal and checking it for dents or rust.

“It’s in pretty good condition.” You said when he raised his brows at you questioningly “Canned food has a pretty long shelf life... and if that's true, I’m pretty sure we won’t die of food poisoning if we eat it.” "Eh," he shrugged, "it's worth a shot." Schlatt rewrapped the unfinished jerky and slid it into his bag. With the help of his pocket knife, he cut open the can and poured some water into it before setting it on the fire to cook. A few minutes later, you both were eating halves of the steaming ravioli. Granted it was a bit off and you had to water down the sauce a little but it was miles better than the leather you were just eating. You did not miss the way Schlatt took his first bite and had to duck his head into his hand, eyes closed in satisfaction as he chewed. "This is fuckin' good." Finally, food that actually tasted like food.

Even the cat- Jambo came around to you, sniffing at the small piece you let him have before scarfing it. 

You stuffed the spoonful of pasta into your mouth, taking a moment to enjoy the hot meal while staring up at the night sky.

A subtle sense of calm and security cloaked around, warming you like the low ambers of fire as you stole glances at the man. The stranger. You knew better than to place your trust in someone you just met. But he- Schlatt- you leaned back in an attempt to physically recoil from your thoughts- he felt different. He acted different. His eyes didn't glaze over with violence or greed, they didn’t linger on you too long for you to suspect anything nor did they threaten you (unprovoked that is). They just looked tired. Eyes that had seen too much, all the chaos and massacres that plagued the world. Eyes that bore witness to his hands trembling in disbelief as he had done the very things he swore to never do. All the scars on his face and the calloused skin proved that. Tiered tiered eyes.  

You felt inexpressible relief- 

Don’t.

-and a bit of regret. 

You let out a long and heavy sigh, not letting your mind wander to hope for anything more than this. This was good. You would live another day. 

This was good enough.

"Nice truck." You commented. It was a pretty decent rig by the looks of it; a four-seater and cargo bed which was covered with a tarp. With the way it was rusting and had its paint scratched off exposing silver streaks of the body, the poor thing had definitely seen better days. "Headed anywhere in particular?" 

"Not really. The last place we-" him and the cat "were staying was ambushed by raiders. Was near the deserted FEDRA hospital down south- y'know the place where they were looking for a cure?" Then it clicked. Since FEDRA abandoned the building and withdrew the general area, quite the ruckus started going down there. Hunters started marking the area as their land. No longer heavily guarded by FEDRA soldiers, raiders slithered their way in. And that was when you first heard his name. Schlatt. He was the only one, who supposedly, gunned down more than half of the raiders before finally escaping. "We made it out just in the nick of time."

"Were... there other? With you?"

"Yeah, but uh, we got separated." Schlatt pulled out a walkie-talkie, flicking it on to only hear the sound of steady static. "It's been months so-" He cleared his throat, "They're as good as dead at this point."

But you're going to put that radio back in your backpack or on the dashboard of your truck. Flicking it on every few days or so, telling yourself that they're dead but unable to take out the batteries that could be used for something better in the future, holding on to that sliver of hope. You won't tell him to lose that hope, since hope is the only thing that keeps most of you going. “I’m sorry.”

"Nah, don't worry about it." Schlatt flicked it back off.

“Hmm...You’re headed east from here?” You asked.

His brows raised as he looked a bit off to the side, “Sure.” He wasn’t. It was as clear as the night sky that he didn’t know where the hell he was going or where he wanted to go.

“Drop me off a few miles from here.” You placed a hand on your thigh. “I’ve got...” A beat passed. Hesitation crawled up behind your neck before somehow letting go. “I’ve got a place. A small farm.”

“A farm? Like with cows and shit?”

“More like Chickens. And a garden. And running water.”

"Chickens?" The corner of his mouth twitched upwards in surprise, for the first time giving you something besides a sneer or dead-eyed glare. The only place he knew that had some sort of functioning farm was at some place called Jackson. “Aha, think you can spare some for this little guy?” He asked, eyes pointing towards Jambo.

“Why not? Drive me there and if you’d like, umm, you can rest there for a while before heading off to wherever you need to go.”

Schlatt squinted at you, "I hope you're not planning to kill me. Like, I drive you to your so-called base and a dozen men show up out of nowhere." It wouldn't be the first time he fell for something like that, but that was years ago and he now knew better than to just walk into a trap like that. A teasing grin played on his face. You shook your head, mirroring the grin and relaxed a bit as you felt a bit of the ice break between you two. “What? You pull a gun on me and think I’d trust you just like that? Geez.” Craning his neck back, his eyes turned towards the sky, looking at the moonless night while tapping his thumb on his hand and the cogs in his brain turning. 

Schlatt turned back to you. "Promise not to kill me?" 

How often did people keep up with those?

"As long as you promise not to kill me... or steal my shit."

Not often these days. 

Schlatt let out a chuckle, showing off the row of his upper teeth. "You've got yourself a deal." 

++++++

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master list

[blossom-hwa]

elegies | k.th

pairing: Taehyun x Beomgyu genre: angst, apocalypse!au warnings: cursing, character death, mentions of blood and guns, zombies word count: 7.1k notes: — this is the second rewrite I'm posting here of this story! you can find the original and the first rewrite linked below :) As the world around him falls, Taehyun keeps moving on.

Lavender Mist | the things we lost along the way | TXT Masterlist

Kai disappears in the middle of the night, and all he leaves behind is a note. 

I’m sorry. But everyone’s leaving and I have to leave first or you’ll leave me too.

Don’t look for me. 

That’s it. That’s all, the culmination of nearly twenty years of friendship—familiarly messy handwriting scribbled in fading pen on a scrap of dirty paper, fingerprints of dirt smeared on the edges. It’s still in Taehyun’s backpack, crumpled so much by now it’s unreadable, but it doesn’t matter. He couldn’t forget those three sentences if he tried. 

I’m sorry. 

Taehyun’s sorry, too. Because for all the betrayal of Kai’s disappearance—he chose to leave, chose to vanish, chose to leave Taehyun behind in this shell of a world when they’ve been best friends for so long—Taehyun wonders if things would have happened the same way if he’d been more observant. Less consumed in his own grief. Able to see Kai, really see him in the days after Yeonjun and Soobin left. Would the blank of Kai’s silences have managed to permeate the dull static of his own thoughts. Would Kai have come to him? Would he have been convinced to stay?

They look for him anyway, Taehyun and Beomgyu both. The undead roam and the sun burns fierce, but even as the heat sloughs off his skin and the faces of the undead haunt his sleep, Taehyun can’t stop, won’t stop, even when Beomgyu lays a hand on his arm and says with his eyes that Kai isn’t coming back. 

Because he can’t be gone. Not like this. It’s just—a cruel joke. It has to be. Taehyun searches every house and sees Kai hiding behind every corner. He ventures into abandoned subways to find Kai walking out of an old train. He wanders the earth in a daze, seeing Kai everywhere and nowhere, and he’s gone but he can’t be he won’t believe Kai can’t be gone he can’t be gone I need to find him—

Then an undead lurches out of a gas station bathroom and nearly takes a chunk out of Beomgyu, and Taehyun remembers he still has someone to lose.

So he opens his eyes. Blinks away the visions of Kai that haunt the corner of his eyesight, and forces himself to see the world beyond the blank space that Kai left when he disappeared. There is still someone here. Someone left. Someone with him—who stayed even after Kai chose to leave, who still cares for Taehyun, miraculously, even after weeks and months of neglect. And so they move on. As five minus two minus one. 

So it’s something of a fucked up joke when Kai returns. 

. . . . .

He appears as a shadow in the corner of Taehyun’s eye. Another hallucination, Taehyun thinks at first. A mirage in the heat shimmers rising from the sunbaked ground. He turns away, ready to ignore it, but then Beomgyu gasps, too. 

“Kai.”

Taehyun blinks, and there’s his friend standing in the sun, staring back with shattered eyes.

Everything in Taehyun screams to sprint forward, to grab Kai and shake him and hug him and punch him hard. Sob a garbled mix of something like fuck you and how did you find us and I’m so glad you’re back and what happened to you—

But then he sees the black veins creeping up Kai’s neck, and he knows.

“Taehyun.” Kai’s familiar voice cracks on the syllables of his name, but his shattered eyes are clear, so clear. He doesn’t move, but Taehyun has to fight the urge to step back. “Please.”

Please. His head spins. The world is static and only Kai’s bruised face is clear. Please. What the hell is he asking for—

Bulging pupils drop to the gun at his side, and Taehyun understands. 

“No. No.” He shakes his head, takes the step back. “No, no—Kai—I can’t—”

“Please,” Kai whispers again. “For me.”

Solid in the haze of the sun and the moment, Beomgyu’s hand makes its way to Taehyun’s shoulder. He barely feels it, almost doesn’t even remember anyone exists but Kai and him, but he does hear when Beomgyu’s whisper flutters past the static and into his ear. “You don’t have to.”

And he’s right. Because Taehyun doesn’t have to—in the strictest definition of the word. He doesn’t have to raise the gun, put Kai out of his misery the way Kai wants him to. The world will move on if he doesn’t. He could turn around and walk away and nothing would be any different. 

Besides, Kai was the one who left first. 

But—he’s also wrong. Because Kai’s been bitten and if he doesn’t die, he’ll live forever in the worst way possible. Because if Taehyun does turn away, he’ll be condemning Kai to a fate they’ve both agreed is worse than death. Because Kai is still his best friend, no matter what, and who is Taehyun to resist a dying boy’s last wish? What is he, really, if he doesn’t?

Taehyun’s hands are cold. He doesn’t shrug off Beomgyu’s grip, but he does shake his head. “No,” he replies, numb fingers wrapping around the barrel of the gun. “No, I do.”

Kai stares up at Taehyun as he readies the weapon, cracked glass eyes almost whole as a little smile glimmers on his face. “Thanks,” he whispers, and in that moment, Taehyun can’t do it. Won’t do it. This Kai looks too much like the old one, the one with a bright smile and a dolphin screech laugh and dark eyes that glittered with mischief—

Dark eyes marred, now, by those bulging black veins crawling across bruised, burnt skin. 

Almost on reflex, Taehyun pulls the trigger. Bang.

And what remains of Kai slumps over, blood and brains pooling in a deep red puddle on the dusty ground. 

Taehyun stands there for a while. A second, a minute, an hour—he’s not sure. It’s cold and it’s hot and the world is hazy and he can’t move, can’t tear his gaze away from the remnants of his best friend.

“Taehyun.”

When he finally reacts to his name, Beomgyu has definitely said it more than once. His grip has tightened on Taehyun’s shoulder but when Taehyun finally twitches, the rough-soft hand loosens, slides down to his wrist. “Come on,” Beomgyu says quietly, tugging slightly. “We need to go.”

Blood and brains, still open eyes. A smile. 

Taehyun doesn’t move. 

“Taehyun.” The grip tightens. “Let’s go.”

Go. Let’s go.

“Taehyun.”

He forces his eyes away from the bloody hole blown into Kai’s head. Vaguely, he feels the gun being peeled out of his hand, hears the safety clicking back on. Beomgyu tugs at his arm again and with a final whisper of his name Taehyun follows, numbly, Kai’s bloody face all he can see. 

. . . . .

How do you remember the dead? 

It’s a question Taehyun hasn’t been able to answer in the months since the outbreak, when the initial slew of bodies filled the streets and his parents never came home. He could have answered before—smiles immortalized in picture frames, voices in videos taken on phones with the recorder laughing behind the camera. But the internet is gone now and with it the hundreds of thousands of memories people left stored in the cloud. Photos are easily crumpled, even those tucked into plastic sleeves eventually ruined by rain or dotted with dust and dirt, and the time it takes to properly sketch and color a scene to remember is a luxury no one can afford anymore. It’s not as if Taehyun ever had the skill for it anyway. 

Memory, then. The duty of the human mind. But the brain is a fickle thing—imperfect, messy, jumbled and imprecise compared to the printed photos he once held in his pocket and backpack, the pictures and videos he had saved on his phone. It remembers what he wishes it wouldn’t and lets go of what he holds most dear. The voices of his family, his friends. Their smiles, their laughs. Ghosts, now, all of them—so faint and pale compared to the horrors that haunt him now. These are the things that leave. 

Kai’s bloody face is one of the things that stays. 

It haunts him in the days after, that vision of a bloody smile. Beomgyu’s gasp, the black veins creeping up Kai’s face, spasms of pain ruining the angelic picture his friend had once been. The gun barrel between his hands, the broken look in Kai’s eyes, a whispered plea for a mercy that only he could grant. The whole moment is so vivid in the way Kai’s last smiles aren’t. It isn’t right. It isn’t fair. 

Life isn’t fair, his parents had told him in the past about things like broken crayons and strict teachers. Move on, and let go. And maybe, in the old world, he could have taken that advice. But they weren’t there to see the world crumble. They weren’t there to watch Taehyun take his first undead life at the ripe age of nineteen, his first real life weeks later. They weren’t there when the ropes at which he could grasp in this swirling ocean of a desert frayed and snapped, when the world took everything and everyone away and left him behind. They weren’t there to watch their son shoot his best friend in the face. 

How do you move on when there’s nothing to move on to?

Life isn’t fair. Taehyun hates his parents for leaving him with that, and loves them for not knowing better. What a luxury it would be to have been left behind in the strange world of before, of neon lights and supermarkets and the ability to store laughs on the cloud, never to face this new earth full of monsters only before seen in nightmares. He’s grateful they didn’t have to see what he’s become. He resents that they left him to figure this out alone. He prays that their lives ended as painlessly that they could have. He cries when it hits him, over and over and over, that he’ll never see them again. 

Move on, and let go. 

He's so glad they died in a world where that was the best advice they could have given, and hates them for not living long enough to give him something better. 

(What would his parents say if they knew what he had done? What words would they have given him to live off of?)

(Would there be anything to say at all?)

So Taehyun doesn’t move on. Can’t. Because—he needs to know. How do you reconcile the horrors of now with the joy of the past, keep the memories of the dead alive without seeing their bloody faces every minute? He can’t remember Kai’s laugh or his music, not when his mind won’t stop playing that moment on loop, a faint smile, a whispered thanks, a sharp bang and the remnants of Kai’s body falling, falling, falling to the ground…

Five days after he pulls the trigger, Beomgyu finally begins to tell him.

“They’re still with us.”

Taehyun isn’t sure why that’s what brings him out of this half lucid stupor. Vaguely, he understands that Beomgyu has been talking to him for a while. Talking at him, at least, because he definitely hasn’t been responding. But for some reason he hears that sentence, fully registers it, and though there must be some context he doesn’t have the constant aching grief catches fire in his chest and all he can think is how dare you, how dare you, how fucking dare you try to say that to me now—

“How do you know?” He has Beomgyu’s dirty shirt in his grip, the older boy looking up at him with eyes wide in confusion, surprise, burgeoning anger of his own. “How do you fucking know? How could you say that to me, how could you try and say that after I killed him with my own hands—”

And then his eyes begin to burn. And the tears begin to fall. And the fire dies as soon as it blazed, melted under the weight of Beomgyu’s words, and he’s crying, sobbing, his grip on Beomgyu’s shirt gone as every tear he hasn’t been able to shed over the death of everyone he loved releases itself from the broken remnants of his soul, and he’s crying, and crying, and crying—

Beomgyu’s face swims in his vision. It’s so clear, that moment, despite the blur of his tears obstructing the large eyes and thin lips drawn in a pinched, painful expression Taehyun recognizes from his own few encounters with a mirror since it all started. Because—fuck, Beomgyu is grieving, too. Kai wasn’t just Taehyun’s friend. At some point in time, he was Beomgyu’s too. 

Yet despite this grief, Beomgyu’s eyes are soft. No longer angry. And—in the future, Taehyun will know why. Because the loud and playful and endlessly, carelessly kind Beomgyu that he’d known from a distance on the schoolyard is somehow still the Beomgyu of this deadened husk of a world, brash and cheerful and sweet chaos personified in his lightning sharp laugh, still a ray of kindness and raw hope despite all the world has done to make him otherwise. In the moment, though, he doesn’t know. Doesn’t understand. Can’t comprehend how Beomgyu couldn’t hate someone who’d killed a boy they both knew because for all that they’d each pulled the trigger, it had never before been on someone they knew as a brother, a boy they both cherished and loved. So why was Beomgyu still here and trying to comfort him, of all things, when Taehyun was the one who’d caused him so much pain?

“He’s dead,” Taehyun sobs. “He’s dead, and I killed him.”

“He asked you to,” Beomgyu replies quietly. 

Against his will, the image returns. Kai’s eyes, so clear, so earnest as he asked despite the oozing veins spasming up his neck and cheek. Please. For me. Words as lucid as his eyes had been, then, devoid of the glazed grief they’d held when Yeonjun and Soobin went, of the emptiness they’d borne the night before he left. In those last moments, if you could ignore the final phases of infection creeping up his skin, he’d have been indistinguishable from the childhood best friend Taehyun had known all his life. 

Taehyun squeezes his eyes shut against the scene burned into his vision. Please. For me. 

Who was he to refuse the smallest of mercies to the boy he’d always called a friend?

But still, the grief keens in his chest. But still—even then—

(Mom, Dad, I’m so glad you never saw me like this.)

“It wasn’t fair of him to,” Beomgyu continues, cutting through the ache. “But he did.”

Taehyun’s stomach lurches. Twists. It wasn’t fair of him to. No, it wasn’t, but what else could he have done? What else? He was already in the final stages of infection. He had no weapon that Taehyun could see. What could Taehyun have done—what the fuck else could he have done, what other fucking choice did he have—

Life isn’t fair. 

Not fair. Never fair. It never could’ve been, never would’ve been, not in this world where he’s been cursed to remain amidst the ashes of everything he’s ever known. 

“None of this,” Taehyun grits out, trying not to scream, “is fucking fair.”

“It isn’t,” Beomgyu agrees. “And they—Kai, Yeonjun, Soobin, everyone—they know that.”

Clear as day, unsaid words hang in the air. 

None of this is your fault.

“That’s how I know they’re still with us, Taehyun. Because nothing was fair to them, and nothing is fair to us.” Beomgyu had been holding him before but somehow Taehyun was also holding Beomgyu, then, fingers and legs twisted, their sides pressed together as the older boy heaved a deep, shuddering sigh that Taehyun could feel against his chest. “They know it, and they accept it. They must.” 

So honest. So sound. So reasonable in Beomgyu’s soft voice, even though on the schoolyard, Taehyun had often fancied himself the more logical and cynical of the two, between his skepticism and Beomgyu’s purported cheer. He listens, and tries to hear, and though the moment is but a blur between the pounding in his head and the tears in his eyes, some things echo. Some things stay. Beomgyu’s words ground him, his voice hoarse with tears, whispering so clearly into Taehyun’s ear. 

“I want you to know, too, Taehyun. That’s why I dare to say it.”

. . . . .

In the weeks after, Taehyun thinks. And wonders. Ponders Beomgyu’s words and their truth, teases apart belief from fact. It’s true that life is unfair, that nothing has been fair for Taehyun or Beomgyu or anyone else they knew, but how does Beomgyu know with such certainty that the others know? That they believe, and understand? Because knowing and believing are not one and the same, and besides, they’re dead. How could Beomgyu ever know the thoughts of the dead?

“I don’t know,” is what Beomgyu admits when Taehyun finally finds the courage to ask. They’ve long stopped counting the days but it’s been some time, maybe a month or two, though neither of them can be sure. “Like you say, it’s belief, not fact, but only in the sense that they never told me. I believe in them.” He sighs a little. “That they would never blame us for their circumstances, the way we’d never blame them for ours.”

Taehyun stares at the ceiling, feeling the rough, dusty carpet beneath them. They’re lying in another abandoned house, the previous one picked clean of the few provisions it once had. Picture frames of a happy family haunt the tables and walls, and he tries his best to ignore their eyes staring down at him from their perches. Some of them have fallen to the floor, knocked over by another survivor too worried about food to care about a few smashed pictures and panes of glass. 

Or perhaps the photos unsettled them as much as they unsettle Taehyun, and they gave in to the urge to shatter the frames on the ground. 

Grief and loathing rise in Taehyun’s chest, and he swallows around the urge to vomit. Beomgyu is better than he is. Taehyun still finds himself cursing his parents for leaving him alone like this. Soobin for getting sick. Yeonjun for disappearing. Kai for forcing him to pull the trigger. Even Beomgyu, sometimes, for making him wanting to stay alive even the slightest bit when it would be so much easier to just give up. Which is none of their faults and he would never want the dead to return just for the sake of his own cold comfort, but it still fucking hurts and sometimes it tries to eat him alive. 

He tells Beomgyu as much, not really knowing what reaction to expect, but the older boy only shrugs from his position splayed out on the floor. “But you could never really blame them for this, could you?” 

He’s right. Taehyun couldn’t. Which just makes everything hurt more. 

“I don’t want to think of them this way,” he says. To his side, he feels Beomgyu’s eyes turning to him, but Taehyun keeps staring at the ceiling. “I just—I want to remember the good things. The memories we had. And how they should have been, if we were all still alive.”

“…Remember when I told you they’re still with us?”

Taehyun almost snorts. “I nearly strangled you, I think it’d be hard to forget.”

“Yeah, well.” Beomgyu snickers too. “Besides that, I was being serious, you know.” His tone turns somber, and even though sleep pulls at his eyelids, Taehyun strains his ears to listen. 

“It’s not really remembering,” Beomgyu says quietly. “At least for me. It’s like…a certainty. Knowing that they were there. Knowing that they lived, knowing that I loved them, and knew them, and knowing that they loved and knew me too. I was touched by them when they lived.” He takes a deep breath. “So as long as I live, a part of them…they’ll always be alive, too.”

Beomgyu’s words wash over Taehyun’s skin, a light balm to soothe the ever-present ache in his chest. It’s a lovely thought—so lovely, really, that only Beomgyu, the last ray of raw hope in this world, could have thought of it. But when he finishes, and the silence falls again, something about it still doesn’t sit right with Taehyun. Because it’s all a little too lovely for this broken world of disaster and death. 

“How can you think that?” Taehyun asks, and there’s no venom this time. Because for all the beauty of Beomgyu’s words he still can’t quite comprehend them, understand how Beomgyu could ever accept them fully. He wants to know. Needs to. Kai’s face still haunts him whenever he closes his eyes, blood and a smile and stifling smoke rising from a gun in his hand, and he needs it to stop and Beomgyu’s the only one who knows how. How do you remember the dead for what they were, and not just the monsters they became? 

“I don’t know,” Beomgyu says again, voice almost frustrated and uncharacteristically sharp. He softens, though, when Taehyun finally meets his eyes. “I just…” He swallows. “I don’t think I’d be able to live if I didn’t believe in it.”

They sit in silence for a while as Taehyun mulls over Beomgyu’s words. I don’t think I’d be able to live if I didn’t believe in it. He understands. It feels like if he doesn’t believe in something, the grief will bury him alive. 

“I feel like I’m dying,” Taehyun says quietly. “Every moment, even when I’m not.” Drowning in what is, what was, what could have been.

“Me too,” Beomgyu replies, and in the fractured starlight glinting into his dark eyes, Taehyun knows he’s telling the truth. That he’s dying, but his belief lends him a rope in this dark, dark ocean of blood and sorrow, a rope to cling to that keeps him alive. 

I want to believe, too, Taehyun screams inside. I want to. I need to. 

“Taehyun.” Moonlight glints in Beomgyu’s eyes. “Look at the stars.”

Taehyun looks out the window. The black night glitters with little diamond stars, so bright and so beautiful that his breath catches. How had he never noticed them before?

“Sometimes, when it’s my turn to watch, I look at them. And I pretend.” Taehyun follows the trail of Beomgyu’s finger as he points to the sky. His eyes, once fractured, now glitter wholly in the moonlight, soft and shining and lovely, all-knowing, so full of a glowing foreign hope. “Like, in that cluster, maybe that’s my mom. And my dad, and my brother. And maybe, next to it, there’s Yeonjun and Soobin and Kai right there.” His finger shifts slightly. Hovers. When he looks back at Taehyun, there’s a little smile on his lips, strong and soft and sure. “I like to think that someday I’ll join them, and we’ll finally be together again.”

Another lovely cliché, one that could only have sounded so beautiful from Beomgyu’s own voice. And this time, when Beomgyu’s hand lowers to the ground, Taehyun finds himself bound by the spell of his words for just a moment longer as the stars twinkle cheerfully above him. 

But they’re too lovely. Too bright. Too beautiful to be proper elegies for the dead, when their cruel hope never even dims as the pieces of Taehyun’s world shatter one by one. They could never reflect the sorrow he carries in his scraped hands, the grief he cradles in his ruined chest, the memories, good and bad, that he clings to in the fragments of his broken mind. And as Taehyun continues staring, staring, trying to summon the hope that sparkles so beautifully in Beomgyu’s eyes, all he can think is one thing. 

The stars have no right to shine this brightly, not when everyone he loves is dead.

. . . . .

It’s not the only fancy of Beomgyu’s that Taehyun doesn’t understand. Beomgyu sees so many stars in his sky, finds hope in so many strange little things—a tiny flower by the side of the road, a single whole lollipop in a dusty convenience store, a rare, cool wind breezing through his hair as they trek from one shelter to another, taking from empty grocery stores and hiding in abandoned subways. It’s fascinating to Taehyun, really—that Beomgyu can go through so much, can see Kai’s bloody face in his memories every day, and still find something in nothing and believe it matters. He’ll turn around to find Beomgyu humming old songs to the empty air. Inhaling the scent of nature’s overgrown flowers so deeply he chokes. Making bracelets in five braided colors of string as a byproduct of a night’s boredom, looped around his wrist when Taehyun wakes. 

“I found the string in a random room and remembered making these when I was a kid,” is all he says to the question in Taehyun’s raised eyebrows. “Got bored while you were sleeping.” 

It feels strange, the sensation of the soft, thin braid tickling his wrist as Beomgyu ties it in place, shifting against his skin as he turns it this way and that. Five threads messily twisted and turned together. Five colors, five boys, five friends…

Material things don’t last. Taehyun knows this well. It’s one of the first things he learned in the days after the world fell apart—when the photos he carried of his family finally ripped to the point of no return, victims of dust and rain and his dirty backpack and pockets, when the mementos of home he tried to take became more burdens than memories and he had to leave them behind. But though he knows this, something akin to hope still flares, the tiniest spark, in his chest. 

Later, he’ll admit to himself that he’d hoped, foolishly, that this could be his grounding. That this could be how he would remember. But for now he pushes the spark away, looking at Beomgyu and raising an eyebrow to hide the lump welling in his throat. “You sure this is a braid?” he asks, and neither of them says anything about the way his voice catches on the last word.

Beomgyu sticks out his tongue and Taehyun has to hide a smile at how ridiculous the older boy looks, eyes narrowed and glinting with mock hurt and mischief. “You don’t need to wear it if you don’t want to, jerk.”

Even as Beomgyu says the words, though, Taehyun knows that nothing could ever induce him to take it off on his own. Because for all he can’t understand Beomgyu’s stars in a dark, dark night, Taehyun does understand how he feels about the lovely stars in Beomgyu’s own eyes that make him want to listen to everything the loud-mouthed, sweet-tongued boy has to say. A candle lit in the dark, a rope thrown to the drowning. 

A single star in Taehyun’s black night, the only one he could ever say was truly beautiful.  

Which is why, perhaps, when the bracelet disappears several months later after a too-close call with a horde of the undead, Taehyun feels like something in his chest has been ripped open and torn out. It was bound to happen, he knew—the strings were already thin and faded before Beomgyu found them, and the dust and grime of every day under the hot sun couldn’t have helped. But still, when they get away and Taehyun realizes only dried black blood and sweat now decorate his wrist, not a hint of the five colors to be seen, he nearly goes back. Nearly turns around and sprints to where he almost died just to find it again. Because of that hope, that cruel, dangerous hope—hope when he knew, he knew, that it couldn’t be.

(Hope is meant for the naïve. Hope is meant for fools. Hope is meant for the people who still see loveliness in a world torn apart, for the people who look at the stars and do not see the cruelty of their beauty, only their cheerful, everlasting glow.)

(Hope is a sword that attacks the wielder and weakens him to the world, showing him the love obscured by dust and static and blood.)

(Hope is a word that gives the world meaning again.)

(Hope is a weapon that snatches that meaning away.)

Beomgyu stops him, a hand on his wrist. “Leave it,” he says quietly, his fingers wrapping gently around Taehyun’s arm. “It’s done what it can.” 

But—it hadn’t. Hadn’t, at least, the way Taehyun wanted. It hadn’t remained the grounding point that he needed. It hadn’t kept the horrors away. In fact, it was one of the horrors that tore it from him, tore away Beomgyu’s gift and the meaning attached to it, leaving only black blood behind. 

(Hope is a weapon that snatches that meaning away.)

Taehyun cries that night, tears running hot and silent down his cheeks as Beomgyu breathes softly in his sleep. And when Beomgyu eventually wakes to Taehyun’s quiet sobs, he doesn’t stop the older boy from wrapping his arms around him, bringing Taehyun’s head down to his shoulder, and letting the tears soak into his shirt. 

Because for all it seemed Taehyun never understood Beomgyu, it had always felt like Beomgyu understood him. 

. . . . .

Beomgyu knows, too. That material items don’t remain, that they can’t be counted on to house the memories they need, desperately need, to preserve. Taehyun was there when Beomgyu’s own photos became too crumpled and torn to salvage, when the braid he’d made for himself disappeared beneath the dust and dirt of the earth just days after Taehyun lost his. For all his sentimental nature, Beomgyu understands the world around him, knows that despite warmth of its burning sun, nature is cold and unforgiving to those who have wronged it. 

So when Taehyun finds the empty can of lavender Febreze in Beomgyu’s bag, he feels like he should be surprised. The last of the scent has long since dispersed into the air, memories of the smell relegated to the back of his mind, so when it comes out in his hand he blinks a little and for a moment there is some surprise—he’d thought Beomgyu tossed it when it emptied. But then he blinks again, and he has to wonder how he ever could’ve thought Beomgyu would even think of throwing it away.

It had been a rare cool day when Beomgyu plucked the can off a barren supermarket shelf and shoved it into his bag, despite Taehyun’s raised eyebrows and obvious concern for the state of his remaining sanity. Taehyun hadn’t asked questions then, but when they found shelter for the evening, just a few days out from where they hoped to reach a survivors’ compound, he’d raised a pointed eyebrow as Beomgyu produced the can from his bag. 

“Don’t interrogate me!” Beomgyu had yelped, hands raised in mock indignation as Taehyun fought to hide a smile at his antics. “I’m innocent!”

“I wasn’t going to interrogate you,” he’d replied, giving up on hiding the smile. There was no point anyway, not when Beomgyu looked so carefree, so happy, so unchanged despite the cruelty of the world around him. “I just want to know.”

The hands came down, but Beomgyu’s smile stayed. “I don’t know,” he’d said, shrugging. “It was just there, so I took it.” Taehyun had snorted at that, but he wasn’t done. “I guess I just…didn’t want to leave with nothing at all.”

Despite the previous levity, Taehyun remembers a tightness in his chest, a prickling behind his eyes as he stared at the almost garishly purple can in Beomgyu’s dirty hand. That was something he could understand. 

“Do you even know how it smells?” he’d asked, ignoring the stupid lump in his throat. He’d never quite given up on that habit, not even long after Beomgyu proved he could read Taehyun no matter how he tried to keep his tears quiet. 

But Beomgyu didn’t say anything, just looked at the can with a guiltily mischievous expression on his face. His finger rested on the valve as he looked back up at Taehyun, ready to shrug again as he grinned. “Look, it has to be better than the things we smell outside.”

It was better, but mostly because it’s hard not to be better than the stench of rotting corpses mixed with the tang of dried blood coupled with the scent of blooming flowers in the hot wind that somehow makes it all worse. Strong, too—clearly a year of sitting unused on a shelf hadn’t done much to dampen the scent. When Beomgyu sprayed it the first time, more on accident than anything else, they had to stifle coughs and sneezes for too many minutes as the mist tickled their noses.

And yet they kept it. 

Which is weird, because most useless things that Taehyun and Beomgyu, despite his inner child, would put in the same category as questionable year-old Febreze get left behind. It’s a luxury, and there’s no space for luxuries in their bags—not phones, not photos, not dingy string bracelets braided with threads in five different colors. Things like Febreze weren’t supposed to have held a place in their lives. 

But as the days pass, Beomgyu carves out a place for its too-strong flowery sweet scent. A tiny puff in the air when they return to their current shelter after finding the compound razed to the ground. A small spritz to freshen up before they move on to the next abandoned home. And as they keep struggling through their barren world, emptying the can on their way, Taehyun begins to wonder—when humanity has completely fallen and another race takes up the earth, what will they be remembered by? Will it be the broken braided bracelets threaded in five different colors fallen by the side of the road? Will it be photos of the dead left in abandoned frames in abandoned homes, or stuffed in dirty bags and soiled by dust and rain?

Will it be an empty can of lavender mist at the bottom of a survivor’s bag, the strong, sweet scent of home still a wisp in the air?

Because for all the tickle of lavender mist grates on Taehyun’s nose at the start, slowly, subtly, it does begin to smell of home. Of comfort. Of rest. Of Beomgyu’s presence on the days when Taehyun can’t hold the gun for fear of seeing Kai’s bloody face, when Taehyun can only find death and disaster in every street they pass, when he can’t stand without the world crashing down on his shoulders. On these days, there’s always the weight of Beomgyu’s hand in his, in the press of his body against Taehyun’s during sleepless nights, in the brief dusting of lavender mist into the air…

And one day, the scent isn’t too strong. It isn’t too sweet. It’s a break, a respite, a piece of the old world that miraculously wasn’t lost even in the wake of disaster. 

When Taehyun looks at Beomgyu then—really looks at Beomgyu—as he spritzes small bursts of mist into the air of their new makeshift shelter, it only takes him a minute to realize that Beomgyu feels this way, too. That he’s probably felt it for a long time. 

So when Taehyun finds the empty can in Beomgyu’s bag, after the momentary surprise, he blinks once, and twice, and remembers the scent. Remembers the sentiment. Remembers this reminder, however small, of home. 

How could Beomgyu have thrown this away?

He tries the valve, even though he knows it’s empty. Nothing comes out. 

It’s been three days since Beomgyu went. Three days since he showed Taehyun the bite festering black and red, three days since he drew the gun at his belt and weighed it in his hand, three days since he smiled at Taehyun, lips trembling, and raised the muzzle to his temple.

(“Turn around, Taehyun. Don’t watch. It’s okay.”)

(“I won’t do it until you turn away.”)

Only then, with the empty metal can in his hand, does Taehyun finally cry. 

He cries for his parents, who were out when the virus got them and never managed to return alive. He cries for his friends who passed first, three of the five strings that frayed over the months until the knotted bracelet fell off his wrist, one ill, one disappeared, one shot. He cries for Beomgyu, the fourth string and his only family left, his last thread of hope in this heartless world. He cries for him, Taehyun, the fifth string and the last one alive, so far from home and never to return.

Taehyun cries for the hope Beomgyu carried that was destroyed three days ago with a bullet shot by Beomgyu’s very own hands. A bullet that took the last of all that he had, leaving him with—

Nothing. 

(What will the world remember him by when he goes?)

When Taehyun wakes in the middle of the night, eyes red and cheeks sticky with tears, something in him begs to stay still. What use is there in forging on, in living when everything has been lost, when there’s nothing and no one left to survive for?

(A crumpled family photo dissolved in the rain?)

Is there even a point?

(A broken braid of five frayed strings, buried under the dust by the road?)

Taehyun stares at the gun by his side. Loaded. Always within arm’s reach. So easy to lift, so easy to position, so easy to use. It would be so simple to mimic Beomgyu’s actions from three days ago. Lift. Point. Pull. Bang.

(Or the trail of bodies left in his wake, one sick, one vanished, two shot with the very gun by his side?) 

But on his other side, the can of lavender mist rolls against his hand. The metal is warm from his touch, the dirty purple of the wrapping an eyesore in the corner of his vision. He looks at it through bleary eyes and for a moment, he can almost smell it in the air—strong, floral, sweet. 

Home. 

(Perhaps a can of lavender mist at the bottom of a beat-up bag, the remnants of a scent that came from home.)

Material things don’t last, it’s true. Everything eventually gives way to death and decay. But in that moment, Taehyun learns—some things return anew. Bursts of five rainbow colors, a single star in a cloudy night, a remnant of lavender blooming on the breeze—and they tickle a memory in his mind, bringing back, if only for a moment, something beautiful. 

Perhaps this, then, is letting go. How to remember. Not by the stars and their ominous cheer, not by memories slipping from the desperate grasp of his mind. Because he will remember. Always. By the tiny things that remind him of those he once loved, and still loves. 

Memories fade. There are things Taehyun can’t or doesn’t recall for long stretches of time. Voices. Laughs. Smiles. The good and the bad, the horrors and the joys, what once was and now is. But sometimes, a piece of the current world will remind him of something. A bird’s soft chirp brings back his mother’s gentle voice. A roll of thunder crackles like his father’s laugh. Yeonjun’s reassuring grip, Soobin’s soft smile, Kai’s musicality in a light, cool wind curling through the air.

Beomgyu’s hand in his own under a night sky full of stars, fingers loosely intertwined with a promise of hope he will never understand.

(Hope is for the naïve. Hope is for fools. Hope is for the people willing to give their hearts to the world, when nothing guarantees that they will get it back.)

But this is hope. His hope. His remembrance. His elegies for the dead, poems written not in the stars but in the pockets of color he finds as the days go by. There isn’t much for him, not in this world, but there is something left for those who have gone. A hope. A dream. A wish. A prayer whispered on lavender scented air, too sweet and too strong and smelling so much of home—a prayer that things will be okay someday.

(Hope is a weapon that weakens the wielder to an unforgiving world.)

And if they are, even if it only becomes true in the last moments of Taehyun’s life, he wants to see it. For them. 

(Hope is a word that gives the world meaning again.)

It isn’t easy. It isn’t fair. It never will be, really. There will always be days when the horrors constrict his chest so he cannot breathe. There will always be days when he can’t lift himself from the ground, so he tries to just give up. There will never be a reason he’s alive and everyone else is dead. But on those days, when the sun sets and the moon rises and the stars come out once more, Taehyun holds the long empty can of lavender mist, its label rubbed away under layers of dirt and grime, and he remembers. A sweet scent, a cackling laugh. A gentle voice, a warm smile.

A boy who gave him a reason to be. 

So when morning rises, Taehyun rolls over. Stands. Places the empty can back in Beomgyu’s bag, picks it up along with his. Slings them over his back. 

And starts walking again. 

The sun beats harsh on his brow. Branches catch on his clothes. The snarl of animals and the undead alike whisper faint in his ears. But day by day, Taehyun continues, despite the strangling embrace of Mother Nature curling around him no matter where he goes. Because at night, when darkness sets and the moon rises, Taehyun will feel it. Hope. Not in the garish twinkle of the stars, not in the baleful gaze of the moon on his skin, but in the reminder of a boy whose smiles never made sense, who found things beautiful Taehyun could never dream of comprehending, but who held his hand anyway as starlight shimmered in his dark, laughing eyes. 

In the scent of lavender mist filling his nose, no matter where he decides to go. 

Reblogs and comments are deeply appreciated! Hope you enjoyed this, and have a lovely day :)

[pocket-sand-fic]

pleas,,,..,,, apocalypse sequel,,..,,..

When you can't decide how to end the chapter, you write two endings. Take a wild stab which one my twisted self leans towards.

Happy/Hopeful Ending:

Angsty/Open Ending:

[runariya]

Part 2 of this | shout out to @slut4jeon who made this happen part of the prompt game pairing: metro inhabitant!Jungkook x survivor!female reader genre: apocalypse!AU, S2L warnings: survival after nuclear fallout, foul language, basically just smut, jealous JK, oral (f. receiving), a bit of handjob, boobplay, fingering, squirting, a bit of eating out and finger sucking, unprotected seggs, a bit of cock warming, spanking, body worshipping, they are just whipped for each other, rough possessive seggs, JK's a bit whiney, cum shot, lmk if I forgot smth word count: 1.336

••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

Living in the Metro is, to say the least, completely unexpected. It’s like stepping into an alternate universe compared to the outside world. Not that it’s entirely safe here, with certain stations better avoided, especially when you’re on your own, but it’s still so much safer than anything you could have ever wished for.

What’s also otherworldly is living with Jungkook. It’s not only a luxury but like living in a constant dream. You’d never have believed you’d find someone like him, not even when the world was green, and the skies were blue before everything fell apart. But here you are, living the dream because Jungkook is the best partner you could ever hope for.

There isn’t a single day that passes where he isn’t more than willing and eager to please you to the best of his abilities—abilities that are beyond heaven. If you’re sad? He fucks you. If you’re happy? He fucks you too. And if you’re angry with him for reasons you can’t even recall? He’s usually the one responsible for making you forget in the first place.

You’d never complain, though, and never would you deny him or the multitude of orgasms he grants you day in and day out.

Like right now. He saw a seller at Riga Station, the trading hub of the Metro, being a bit too friendly with you. The man even gave you a rare flower, despite everyone knowing you belong to Jungkook. Hoseok just wanted to wind him up, and you suspect he did it on purpose.

“Sit down,” Jungkook orders, pacing the small room while his jaw ticks dangerously. You obey, clutching the flower tightly, not at all scared but rather anticipating the ‘punishment’ you know is coming.

“So now you’re collecting gifts from every man in—”

“I’m not collecting anything, Kook, he gave it to me volunta—”

“Voluntarily?! You didn’t just say that.”

You nod, biting your lip to suppress a smile as you watch Jungkook spiral further into frustration.

“Are you still looking for someone better? Is that it?”

“You never give me flowers,” you pout dramatically, and when Jungkook gestures with both hands to the wall overflowing with flowers and other gifts, you almost feel guilty enough to stop the game and tell him how good he is to you.

Almost.

But you don’t, because his next words are exactly what you’ve been waiting for.

“Maybe I need to remind my girlfriend who’s worthy of her.”

And as Jungkook strides towards you, ripping his army shirt off, you toss the flower aside you don’t care about. In seconds, he’s on you, crushing his lips against yours, his lip piercings digging into your lower lip as his hands grip every inch of your body.

You’re both naked in the blink of an eye, Jungkook alternating between sucking and licking your nipples while you jerk his perfect, hard cock. The sight of him worshipping your body like this never gets old, and his touch is never the same twice.

“I’m going to make sure I’m the only one on your mind.”

Jungkook’s fingers glide down to your cunt, pushing two fingers inside once you’re wet enough. The way his thick fingers stretch you sends stars exploding behind your eyelids, and the pace he sets, combined with his mouth and free hand still working on your tits, is utterly intoxicating. 

It’s insane how he can fuck you so perfectly with just his fingers, knowing exactly where to touch you. When he adds a third finger, thrusting as deep as he can, you know he’s not messing around this time. The burn from the stretch only intensifies when he rasps into your ear, “I’m going to fucking ruin you.”

“Kook!” you cry as he presses particularly hard. You didn’t know he could be this possessive, but God, it’s everything you’ve ever wanted in a man.

“Scream my name, love! Let everyone in this forsaken hellhole know who owns you.”

“Jungkook!” you moan as his fingers thrust relentlessly into you, his wrist occasionally grazing your clit, sending you even higher.

“Fuck yeah. My goddess.”

Your tits and neck are littered with hickeys at this point, and you’ve forgotten all about his cock in your slackened grip, but he doesn’t care. He never cares—his sole focus is your pleasure.

It’s when Jungkook leans back, looking down at you with his lips swollen and shining, that it all undoes you. Your orgasm crashes through you, fast and hard, and even though he’s made you squirt before, it never fails to shock and slightly embarrass you.

But Jungkook doesn’t let you dwell on that. He pulls his fingers out, licks them clean, and then dives straight between your legs, licking up every drop like always.

You’re spent, completely worn out, but you know it’s far from over. His cock is standing proudly, angrily red and ready for its well-deserved attention.

You’d like to give him head, but you know you wouldn’t survive it after what he just did to you. Jungkook, knowing you too well, simply lines himself up and pushes inside without breaking eye contact.

Every inch of him makes your head spin, especially when he bottoms out completely, filling you in a way that makes you never want to be without him.

You’re confused for a moment when he doesn’t move, and then you catch his lazy, wicked smirk. His hands run up and down your thighs before hooking them under your knees and pushing you further into him, making you moan involuntarily.

“You’re going to accept gifts from other men?”

You hesitate. Should you tease him further or stop while you’re ahead?

“Yes?” you test, but it’s clearly the wrong answer.

Jungkook’s hand smacks your ass, making you yelp, moan, and clench around him, only causing that smirk to grow.

“What was that? I didn’t hear you.”

“I said yes.”

Another smack, another moan.

“You think this is funny?”

There’s something about a jealous Jungkook that hits differently, and despite knowing not to push him too far, you also know what’s coming is exactly what you both crave in this doomed world.

“Yes.”

Again, his hand strikes your ass, and this time you can’t hold back, your cunt squeezing so violently around him, coating his abs and thighs with a new wave of arousal. 

“How about I fuck that ‘yes’ out of you, huh?”

There’s no time to answer before Jungkook slams into you without mercy, stealing any possible words from your lips.

“Where’s your big mouth now?”

It’s gone, completely useless. You can only pant in time with his brutal thrusts, his fingers digging deeper into your legs as he forces you even closer, higher, as you cling to his wrists, tears forming from the overwhelming pleasure.

“Scream my name, ____.”

He thrusts harder, but your voice is stolen, only broken cries escaping your lips.

“Scream!” Another slap across your by now red ass, the only thing holding you together is his massive cock.

“Jungkook!” you finally cry out, so loud you swear it echoes not only through you both but through the entire Metro as well. 

“Again.” Smack.

“Jungkook! Yes!”

“That’s right.”

And with that, you’re gone, chanting his name with every thrust, every drop of sweat that falls from him onto your body. Your next orgasm washes over you without mercy.

You know he’s close, too, when he abruptly pulls out like he always does and starts jerking himself off. 

With his eyes locked on you, he comes with a desperate whine, spilling white all over your body like a masterpiece.

He’s beautiful, your gorgeous, perfect boyfriend.

Jungkook collapses onto you, and your fingers instinctively find their way into his hair while he catches his breath.

“You know there’s only you, right?”

He grumbles in response.

“I love you, Kook. Don’t think otherwise.”

“I love you too,” he grumbles again, voice still muffled, but you don’t mind. It just makes him even more endearing.

“Good, because you’re not getting rid of me.”

[paintlavillered]

new favourite genre alert!!!!!

MONSTER (m.)

neighbor!simon riley x reader

tags: zombie apocalypse au, neighbors to lovers, afab!reader, no pronouns, hurt/comfort, smut, NO MAJOR CHARACTER DEATH

cw: description of corpses, simon is aggressive towards you, but also very soft!simon, protective!simon, violence, simon does murder someone, lots of kissing, wet&messy sex, multiple orgasms, edging (simon), missionary position, mating press, fingering, cunnilingus, creampie, breast play, squirting, overstimulation, dirty talk, pet names, eye contact, praise, teeny bit talkin u thru it

note: i think that's all the neccessary warnings but if u think smthn else should be added, let me know. please enjoy this MONSTER fic!!!

; you find yourself hiding out in your apartment as the undead begin walking. luckily, you have a well-trained military operative as a neighbor who is more than willing to keep you safe.

16.5k

“Residents are advised to remain in their homes. Authorities are unsure what is causing the severe aggression in people but the military has been called in nationwide. Please stay tuned as more information becomes available.” 

That was the first news broadcast. They reported  people getting sick-- airborne is what they had said. Stay inside, and stay away from other people. 

So you did just that – stayed hidden away in your apartment, glued to your television for every possible news cast that you could get. 

It was only a week later that the whole story had come out. 

The airborne strain is what caused the first swell of infections. Anyone who was susceptible to the infection would have already become sick by now. But those who were infected by the airborne strain turned…feral. They became like wild animals, barely human. Their skin rotted around them while they were still alive. Their brains died but their hearts remained pumping. They were walking corpses that had a vicious hunger for human flesh. 

The bites are what caused the following wave of infections. Something in their saliva turned you into whatever they were. 

You were scared. When you looked outside your window, down just a few floors to the ground, you could see hordes of people stumbling around, shuffling and shambling. 

Sometimes you would hide in your bathroom as the sounds of gunfire filled the city. It was the worst when it was the middle of the night. 

You weren’t equipped to deal with a disaster of this level – humans turning into disease spreading killers. You were having to ration your food, waiting for the day that there would be an announcement that it was safe. 

You wanted it all to be over. 

Then the news broadcasts stopped, cell service dropped, and the populace was left in the dark. 

You kept the lights off in your apartment, scared that the wandering hordes outside would see it and find you.

You had no idea how long you had been hiding in your apartment, spending most nights with your knees to your chest as you watched the static on the TV. You held out hope that the news broadcast would come back, but it never did. You spent the days and nights in mundane monotony, hopelessness settling in. 

The only interruption was a heavy knock on your front door, practically making you jump out of your skin at the sound of it. You hadn’t expected anyone to actually approach your apartment in search of you. It terrified you that anyone could be out there at a time like this.

With wide eyes and trembling hands, you grabbed a kitchen knife off of your counter and tiptoed towards the front door. Peeking through the peep-hole, you let out a heavy sigh of relief. 

Throwing the door open, you were faced with the familiar balaclava of your neighbor across the hall.

“Simon…” you whispered in relief. 

He wasn’t lunging nor did he have the milky-white eyes of the undead that you had seen on the news. He was normal. 

“What’re you planning to do with that?” he asked, eyeing the kitchen knife still in your hand.

“Oh!” you gasped, quickly placing it on the table by your front door, “Sorry, you– you– startled me when you knocked. Would you like to come in?”

His lidded, brown eyes gaze around your apartment behind you before landing on you again, “You have anyone else in there?”

You blink and slowly shake your head, “No, I’m alone.”

His brows furrow at that, “You’ve been by yourself this whole time?”

You shrug and nod, “What else was I supposed to do? The news reports said to stay inside…”

He hums, “Are you sick?”

“No, I’m fine,” you respond quickly, “Why?”

Suddenly there’s a hand on your forehead and you realize he’s checking your temperature. You remain still and allow him to do it before he's shoving his hands in his hoodie pockets. 

“Fever’s the first symptom,” he explains, “I’m goin’ door to door to check on everyone.”

“Oh!” you gasp, smiling, “That’s very nice of you, Simon.”

You knew that Simon was in the military. He was often out on long deployments and sometimes he had tasked you with keeping an eye on his apartment since you were right across the hall from him.

He was a nice enough guy, if not a little cold and blunt. He was tall and broad, clearly well built despite the fact that he usually wore a hoodie that hid his biceps from view. You’d gotten glimpses of his tattoos when you had knocked on his door one evening and asked him if he knew anything about water heaters because your hot water had been out for nearly a month in the dead of winter and the apartment manager hadn’t done anything to help you.

Simon had kindly come to your apartment, even though it was nearing midnight, rolled his sleeves up and fixed your problem within the hour. You had baked him cookies as a thank you that following weekend. 

“How is everyone doing..?” you venture to ask, leaning against the doorjamb as a breeze flows into your apartment from the open door.

He casts a glance down the hallway, almost like he’s thinking before sighing, “Few people are sick. They’ve been…” he hesitates for a moment, “Quarantined.”

“Probably for the best,” you respond, “Keep them from hurting anyone when they…turn.”

It feels so surreal to be talking about confining people to keep them from literally eating the healthy people. But it seems that’s where you’re all at now. 

“I’m going to barricade our floor,” he says suddenly, “Keep anyone from comin’ in that’s not supposed to come in.”

“What if we need to leave?” you ask, concerned, “We’re only going to have finite food and resources between us. The power’s also going to go out sooner rather than later, Simon.”

“I know,” he sighs, “But we should stay indoors for as long as possible. When the power runs out and we run out of supplies, we can figure out what to do next,” he explains, “The military was on the ground here last I heard, you’ve heard the gunshots. I don’t believe they’ll last much longer but it’s not wise for us to go out while they’re tryin’ to eliminate as many of these…undead as they can.”

“I guess that makes sense…” you whisper before his words finally settle on you, “What do you mean you don’t think they’ll last much longer..?”

He levels a hard stare at you that makes your heart race in anxiety. Simon was always a serious individual by nature but this is how you imagine he looks when he’s on duty, “Hundreds of thousands of people are sick out there. The airborne strain no doubt got to hundreds of the soldiers meant to be protecting the civilians. Eventually, they’ll eat each other from the inside out –literally.”

“You mean even the military is going to collapse..?” you ask, horrified. You try not to let the tears fill your eyes but Simon’s words fill you with a dreadful sense of hopelessness. 

“Communications are cut,” he says finally, “Radio’s been silent all day. Not sure what’s goin’ on but it’s not good.”

The tears quickly began to fall down your cheeks. Before you could wipe them away, a calloused thumb was doing it. You sniffled and looked up at him.

“I-I don’t know what I’m supposed to do,” you confessed softly, “I don’t know how I’m supposed to survive, Simon.”

“Don’t you worry about that, love,” he whispered, grabbing your chin gently to make you look up at him, “I’ll take care of you, yeah?”

“I don’t want to be a burden…” you explain, wrapping your arms protectively around yourself. 

“Wouldn’t be the first time I took care of you,” he joked, though it held little humor, “You won’t be a burden. I’ll teach you what you need to know, alright?”

“You will?” he nods when you look up at him hopefully and you smile, “Thank you, Simon. I don’t really want to die by getting eaten by walking corpses.”

He chuckled under his mask, brown eyes crinkling around the edges a bit, “It is pretty fuckin’ mad, isn’t it?” You laugh, the first genuine smile you’ve cracked since before that first news broadcast, “Why don’t you come across the hall and stay with me, yeah?”

“Is that okay..?” You can’t deny the idea of being with company sounded more appealing than anything. You were definitely beginning to feel the ebbs of loneliness creeping in on you as the days of silence passed. Plus, Simon was…safe, “The news said not to…mingle in case of the disease spreading.”

He scoffed, “Rules like that don’t really apply anymore, love,” he mutters softly, “Plus, neither of us is sick so it’s not like we’ll spread it anyway. I can teach you some knife work and how to use a gun easier if we’re together, yeah?”

“Okay,” you smile, excitement surging in your chest, replacing the painful void of hopelessness you had, “Let me just get some things together and I’ll be right over, okay?”

“Sounds good, love,” you can tell he’s smiling under the mask. He gives you a pat on the shoulder before stepping away, “Just knock when you’re ready.”

You stand in your doorway until he disappears into his apartment. Once you’re alone, you cast a cursory glance around your living room, eyeballing everything you need to take before you dash into your bedroom. From the back of your closet, you grab a duffle bag that you have stowed away in the back of your closet from when you first moved in.

Navigating in the dark of your apartment was a bit of a challenge but you managed to stuff all the essentials into the bag. After slinging it over your shoulder, you step out of your apartment, making sure it was locked before knocking on Simon’s door. 

He opened it quickly, still wearing the same hoodie, jeans, and balaclava as before – his hood still up as well. He stepped aside for you to enter.

Unlike you, his apartment was illuminated by lamps – but his windows were covered with blackout curtains so no light would seep outside. It was pretty plainly decorated, just the essentials and a few photographs on the walls; upon closer inspection it looked like him and, you assumed, his comrades. 

You went to place your bag down but he stopped you, “I cleared out a drawer for you to put your clothes in for the time bein’.”

“Oh…” you gaped at him, surprised to hear that he had done something like that for you, “Thank you, Simon.”

He led you to his bedroom, standing in the hallway while you walked in. His bedroom was darkly decorated, black out curtains on the windows, navy blue sheets and a black comforter on his bed. His furniture was all dark toned as well. 

It suited him, you thought.

There were two drawers open and empty, letting you know that those were yours for the taking. You knelt down and opened your duffle bag, carefully folding and placing your items inside. When you got to your undergarments, you cast a glance towards the door to find that he was no longer standing there. Breathing a sigh of relief, you quickly filled the top drawer with all of your delicates before closing the drawers and standing up. 

Flicking on the light to his en suite bathroom, you placed your toothbrush and toothpaste alongside his, the sight making you blush before you went to add your belongings into the shower as well. 

Realistically, you knew that the water was going to go out sooner or later but you planned to enjoy it for as long as you possibly could until then. 

When you ventured into the living room, Simon was in the kitchen, the cabinets open as he scanned over all of his belongings.

“Is something wrong..?” you asked softly.

“Thinkin’ of how to ration,” he replied quickly, “Have you got any stuff over at yours still?”

You nod your head, “It’s not much but I have some canned food and like...rice and stuff if you want that.”

“Yeah, it’ll be good to consolidate all our supplies in the long run,” he explained, “You got your keys?”

“Yes!” you pull your keyring from your pocket and drop it into his open palm.

“I’ll be right back love, make yourself at home,” he gave you a gentle nudge towards the couch before leaving you there. 

You took a seat on the couch, realizing just how tired you were. You hadn’t realized how tense you’re been for so long on your own. Now that you were safe and with company, you could almost feel the tension sliding right off of you. You rested your head against the back of the couch and closed your eyes, intending to just rest your eyes and enjoy the peace you felt. 

You were startled awake by the sound of the door slamming shut. You nearly jumped out of your skin, wide eyes finding Simon’s who looked a little sheepish.

“Sorry, love,” he whispered, “Didn’t realize you’d be sleepin’.”

“Didn’t mean to…” you confess, standing up and stretching, watching Simon lug a bag of food into the kitchen.

“Haven’t been sleepin’ well?” he asked, his back to you as he began to stock up the cabinets. 

“Not really…” with a sigh, you lean back against the counter with your arms crossed over your chest, “I’ve been stressed about this whole situation.”

“It is…” he pauses in his words, placing a bag of dried beans into the cabinet, “Nothing I’ve ever seen before.”

“Society is really collapsing around us, isn’t it?” you bravely ask, although you were scared to hear the answer.

“Yeah, darlin’,” his voice is softer than you’ve ever heard it and that brings a fresh wave of tears to your eyes.

“This is so fucked up,” you cry, burying your face in your hands, “Thank you, Simon. You didn’t have to offer to help me and I really owe you a lot.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he closes the cabinet, the bag he brought finally empty before turning to you, “I’ll make sure you know everything you need to know to survive.”

“I doubt I’ll be as good as you,” you joke, a crooked, wobbly smile on your face. 

He steps forward and cups your chin, brushing his thumb against your cheek, “No one’s as good as me, sweetheart.”

You chuckle softly at his words. 

This is what you needed – someone by your side to keep you sane as society collapsed and everyone that you knew died. 

That night, you slept better than you had in days. Simon had given you his bed, offering to take the couch. You had argued, telling him that you couldn’t take his bed like that. 

“I’m up most nights anyway, love,” he had assured you, “At least someone around here can get a good night’s sleep in that bed.”

When you woke up, fully rested you might add, Simon was already awake, drinking some tea. You sat down beside him, enjoying a nice quiet morning.

“How do you feel about learnin’ some basics today, love?” he asked when he was cleaning his mug. 

“Sure!” you agreed, “I have to warn you though, I really know next to nothing…”

“That’s alright,” he chuckled, waving to you to follow him to the living room, “I’m a good teacher, I promise.”

“I don’t doubt that,” you watched as he stood up and went to a closet in the hallway, pulling out an assortment of bags and carriers.

He placed them down beside the couch and took a seat next to you. “I think it’s best if we start with you gettin’ comfortable with the feeling of holding a weapon in your hands,” he explained, pulling out a knife bigger than any you’ve seen, “This is a hunting knife.”

He handed it towards you, his fingers confidently gripping the blade between two fingers. You wrapped your hand around the handle, testing its weight in your hands. It was dangerous and nerve-wracking, holding a weapon in your hands. 

“I know it’s scary,” he assured, “But when you’re comfortable holding knives then you can learn to use them properly to protect yourself.”

“What about guns..?” you find yourself asking, still gripping the knife in your hands, turning it over and adjusting your grip just to desensitize yourself to it. 

“We’ll tackle guns when you get used to knives,” he replied.

“So you have guns?” you ask, letting him pull the hunting knife from your hands.

“Of course I do,” he reaches into a bag by his feet, pulling out a pistol. 

Your eyes go wide as you watch him handle it effortlessly, checking the chamber and moving it around in his hands like it wasn’t a dangerous weapon.

“When you’re ready, I’ll teach you to properly use one so you can use it in case of an emergency,” he explained, placing the pistol on the table carefully.

“I’m going to have to kill other people…” you mutter to yourself.

Simon pulled out another knife, passing it into your hands, “Combat knife,” he supplied simply, “And you’ll have to kill them but…I don’t think they’re people anymore, love.”

“I guess that’s true…” you mutter, holding the knife with a firm grip, “I’ve only seen them on the news before it stopped broadcasting. What about you?”

“Haven’t seen ‘em in person either,” he replies with a shrug, “Some of my…teammates,” the words seem awkward coming from his mouth but he continued, “Were givin’ me some information before they went radio silent.”

“What happened to them?” you couldn’t help but ask.

A brief flash of sadness flashed over his eyes but he quickly sobered up, leaning back against the couch with a sigh, “Not a clue. I guess there’s no way for me to know. I just know it was getting bad. Dangerous.”

“I’m sorry about your teammates,” was all you could find in supply of an answer.

Simon didn’t respond, simply letting his gaze fall back on the knife, “Let me show you some handling techniques for you to practice.”

Realizing that he didn’t want to talk about the world outside anymore, you let him lead you through a crash course on knife handling and knife safety. He took the time to teach you the different kinds of knives in his possession and you nodded along as best you could but if you’re being honest – it was primarily lost on you.

You’re not sure if Simon knew that but he seemed to enjoy teaching you, so you let him ramble on to his heart’s content. 

By the end of the day, you were confident enough in at least not accidentally cutting yourself on the sharp blades. 

In order to repay him, you made dinner for the both of you – though, really, it was just some heated up canned soup-- and did the dishes for him so he didn’t have to.

By the end of the night, you both found yourselves on the couch, watching a movie he had put on. With there being no way to watch anything else, you were grateful he had a collection of movies to his name – you simply streamed your favorite shows and movies and called it a day. 

It ticked late into the night and before you knew it, you were falling asleep on the couch, leaned against his shoulder. You could feel him shift and knew you should open your eyes, but the tugs of sleep at the edges of your subconscious kept you from doing so. Suddenly, you felt the soft beat of his heart against your ear and the heavy weight of his arm laid across you. You briefly registered that you were now wrapped in his arms before the final tug of sleep pulled you under.

When you woke up, you were in bed. 

And Simon wasn’t in the apartment. 

“Simon..?” you called, looking around everywhere for him – to no avail. 

You ventured to the door, carefully pulling it open and stepping out. You looked down the hall towards the stairwell before you heard a grunt of effort from the other end. 

“Simon!” you called, making him look up.

“What’re you doin’ out here?” he asked, pausing in his task of pushing a large bookcase towards the elevator. 

“You weren’t inside…” you mutter, wandering down the hall towards him, “What’re you doing?”

“Barricading this elevator,” he replied, giving the heavy object another push with a grunt of effort. 

“Oh, right, you mentioned you wanted to do that,” you mumbled, taking a moment to look over him.

He wasn’t wearing his hoodie for once, instead wearing a tight black t-shirt that was sticking to his skin with sweat. He wore his jeans with a holster and gun on his hip as well. 

“Do you need any help?” you asked but he shook his head.

“No, you can’t help with this, love,” he grunted, giving the bookcase one final, heavy push before it was flush against the elevator doors. 

It was then that you noticed the straps nailed to the wall. He took them and secured them to the other side of the elevators, making sure the bookcase was fastened firmly. 

“Enough people push this and it’ll come down but at least it’s secure enough,” he explained, giving his work a final once over.

“Do you know where the others are?” you find yourself asking as he makes his way to the other end of the hallway

He pauses at that, seemingly thinking of his next words carefully, “I checked door to door. Most of our neighbors got the hell out to go see their families when everything went to shit. A few…were sick and turned in their apartments so I had to…put them down.”

You cringed at his wording, you knew he was trying to phrase it delicately for you but you weren’t sure if you would have preferred him to just say he killed them. ‘Put them down’ made it sound like they were rabid dogs and not people you once knew and smiled at in the halls. 

“Found some notes in some of them,” Simon said suddenly, waving you to follow him back to the apartment – to safety, “Guess we can only hope they made it to their families in one piece.”

“I hope so,” you muttered optimistically, slipping past him when he opened the front door for you.

You quickly realize how difficult it is to tell how much time is passing with Simon’s blackout curtains, which he refused to allow you to open for fear of attracting any unwanted attention. With there being no more news broadcasts or anything on TV, you didn’t even know the date anymore and you were too scared to ask for fear of knowing how long you’ve been living like this. Your food rations were slowly dwindling but neither of you talked about it. 

You know you’re still waking up in the mornings and sleeping at night – Simon seems to run on an extremely specific schedule. When you asked him about it, he told you it was from the military, which made sense. Either way, you were grateful to him for helping you keep on track.

The water and power were both still on, but Simon kept telling you not to keep your hopes up about it lasting long. 

You spent your days learning knife etiquette and practicing stabbing various targets that Simon made for you. You’ve grown much more confident. Of course, you would be no match for your teacher himself but against a bumbling walking corpse? You were sure you would be able to at least buy yourself time to escape if you needed. 

Eventually, Simon decided it was time to move onto what you were most scared of – guns. 

“I’m going to tell you a few things before I let you hold this,” he said, eyes hardened to show how serious he was as he held a pistol in his hands, “Are you paying attention?”

“Of course,” you breathe, wringing your hands in front of you as you eye the weapon.

“You can’t be scared of your weapons,” he advises, “You need to be confident and sure with every movement you make. It’s not a toy.”

“Hard not to be scared of it…” you confess, “What if I hurt someone with it or…I don’t know.”

“That’s why I’m teaching you all this,” he says, “You’ll get confident and less scared the more you handle them. We’re startin’ you off simple and you can build up to bigger and badder guns. For now…pistols will do.”

“Okay,” you swallow around the nervous lump in your throat, “Tell me what I need to know.”

“That’s the spirit,” he praises, holding the pistol up for you to see how he grips it, “First, never put your finger on the trigger unless you’re going to shoot. Just rest your finger on the side like this, see,” he turns his hand and lets you see the way he keeps his finger hovering beside the trigger rather than on it. 

You nod your head, “Got it.”

“Take it,” he says, “Carefully.”

You stare at the offered weapon for just a moment before you reach out and delicately take it from his hands, “Next, never point it at anyone you don’t intend to shoot. Whether it’s loaded or not, keep it pointed away from people and yourself.”

You mimic his grip, grimacing when you realize it's actually much heavier than you thought it would be. It was definitely going to take practice before you built up the ability to hold it for long periods. You follow his instructions and keep it pointed to the ground – albeit awkwardly.

“Here,” he suddenly steps behind you.

You feel your heart catch in your chest when you feel him press against your back. He’s incredibly warm and firm as you lean against him. He carefully takes your hands in his, supporting your hands and holding the gun eye level.

“Just practice lining up your sight and lookin at a target,” he says.

His face is so close to yours, his voice right in your ear, deep and gravelly with that heavy accent. You struggle to process his words, hoping to god he doesn’t hear how fast your heart has started racing.

You close one eye and focus on aiming at a photo on his wall, a small picture frame. His large, gloved hands dwarf your own and you’re suddenly overwhelmed by the scent of him. He smells like cigarettes and the body wash you may have taken a quick whiff of when you used his shower for the first time. You find yourself wondering when he has time to smoke since you’ve never actually seen him do it. 

Your mind is blank beyond anything other than him. How big and warm he is, how safe you feel with him wrapped around you, how good he smells and how much you love his voice as he utters tips and commands into your ear – sickly sweet in that way he always seems to talk to you. 

If you focused too much on it, you’d slowly come to the realization that you may have a crush on him. But you quickly dash that thought from your head and focus back on his gun lesson as he teaches you how to eject a magazine with ease. 

This is about survival. Neither of you have time to dwell on a silly crush. 

A few days later, you’re standing in the eerie hallway with him. He had offered for you to just stay in the apartment and relax while he did the work but you honestly didn’t want to be alone so you opted to sit with him as he worked.

Your back was against the wall, sipping a cup of instant coffee you had made. Simon was silent as he worked on barricading the door to the stairwell. You both agreed that it was best if it was still accessible just in case something happened, but you didn’t want any unnecessary visitors making their way into the safe little haven you’ve both made for yourselves.

“We should think about looting the empty apartments,” you said suddenly, trying to keep your eyes off of his bulging biceps as he yanked on a strap that was attached to the doorknob to keep the door from being opened. 

“That’s a good idea,” he grunted, stepping back to admire his handiwork when he finally finished testing its durability, “Let’s do it.”

He offered his hand and you smiled, taking it and letting him pull you to your feet. You brushed off imaginary dust in an effort to hide how flustered just holding his hand for that brief second made you. 

You started at the other end of the hallway from your shared apartment. Simon displayed a disturbing aptitude for opening up very locked doors. You chose not to comment on it, instead silently being thankful that he was able to do it at all. 

“How about we make a loot pile in the hallway so we can bring it all inside when we’re ready?” you suggest.

“Alright,” he responds, eyes scanning over the cabinets in the kitchen, “Food is our main priority but it wouldn’t hurt to have some medical supplies.”

You agreed and started helping him pick things out, filling your arms full of canned goods and pill bottles which you then deposited in the hallway by your apartment. 

The two of you made it through a handful of apartments, securing a nice resource pile for the two of you. You were feeling good, hopeful, as you stared at your future right there in the silent hallway.

It wasn’t until you opened one in particular— it belonged to a shy, college kid, you remember— that it seems everything changes for you. He couldn’t have been but 18, away from home for the first time and living in his first apartment on his own. 

Simon is busy looting the kitchen, you can hear him placing cans on the counter, consolidating whatever it is he chooses to bring with him. You check the bedroom, looking through the drawers and pocketing a bottle of aspirin and nausea medication before you move to the bathroom. 

The second you push open the door, you’re met with the force of another person shoving into you. You cry out as you hit the ground, the person falling on top of you. You panic and scramble out from under them, their coughing and wheezing forcing you to look at them. 

It’s the kid who lives there. He’s deathly pale, dark circles under his eyes which are bloodshot. His lips are crusty and dry, seemingly struggling with finding something to say.

“Pl-” he starts to whisper before you see movement in the corner of your eye.

“Simon, wait!” you cry when you see the knife.

But it’s too late, the hunting knife you had held with your own two hands more times than you could count, is embedded in the kids skull, spraying blood all over you. All you can do is make a pathetic squeak, fear and panic rendering you unable to say anything as you watch his now lifeless body flop onto the ground beside you, his still warm blood soaking into your clothes as it runs out of the gaping hole in his head.

“The fuck were you thinkin’?!” Simon suddenly shouts, storming over to you and yanking you to your feet roughly.

You stumble up, bumping into him as you stare at the dead body on the floor, “He..He was alive…I…”

“He was sick!” Simon snarls, roughly wrapping his hand around your throat, forcing you to look at him. There was a fire in his eyes that you hadn’t seen before, making you cower, “You’re lucky he didn’t bite you! Fuckin’ hell, are you stupid?!”

“H-He was talking, he was just sick, Simon!” you argued, tears filling  your eyes as you stared up at him, “W-We could have given him medicine, could have–”

“He was a dead man walking,” he shouts, the volume making you flinch, “He was going to turn. Are you a fuckin’ idiot? Thinkin’ we could save him?”

The tears you were holding fell down your cheeks at his cruel words and you glared up at him, “I-I’m not stupid, I just…h-he talked to me!”

“It doesn’t matter,” Simon’s eyes narrow, “He was a threat. A liability. Don’t fuckin’ worry about him, worry about yourself.”

He releases you with a rough shove, taking out some of his anger on you. He continues to glare at you for a long minute before turning his back on you and stalking out of the room, muttering about how stupid it was that you could have killed yourself over some random kid. 

Your eyes fall on said kid, no more blood coming from the wound, simply coagulating on the floor around him, “Y-You’re a monster.”

The words come out of your mouth before you can stop them, quiet and shaky. But Simon hears them clear, freezing on the other side of the doorway, in the hall. 

“I’m a monster..?” he asks, voice suddenly eerily calm. He turns around, his large body taking up an obscene amount of the doorway. You can tell he’s intentionally trying to intimidate you, a punishment that makes your cheeks heat up in anger, “I’ve been breakin’ my back to keep your stupid ass alive and I’m a monster? Because I put down some fucker that was gonna turn rabid in a day?” he glares at you, squinting through the mask and drawing his dark eyebrows together, “You think it’s easy for me? I’m doin’ everything I can to keep you safe!” he shouts so loud that your ears ring and you flinch from the sound alone, “But if you can’t appreciate that then maybe you should be on your fuckin’ own and see how long it takes before you’re ripped apart by those feral bastards!”

He storms off at that, loudly slamming the front door, indicating his final exit from the apartment. You hastily wipe the tears from your cheeks only for more to replace them and you sniffle, casting a sorrowful glance at the dead kid before creeping out of the apartment yourself.

Simon is nowhere in the hall but the supplies you both gathered are still there. 

You carefully open the door to Simon’s apartment and peek inside, finding it completely silent and still. You’re not sure where he went but you decide to busy yourself with loading all your looted items into the kitchen and sorting them all for when he returns.

You’re not sure how long you take to finish but Simon still isn’t back and you become worried.

He had said you should be on your own but surely he didn’t actually just leave the building, did he?

You wander over to his supplies and find a handful of his weapons gone. Your heart shoots into your throat and more tears prick at your eyes before you’re dashing out of the apartment once again.

The door to the stairwell is no longer held shut, indicating that Simon had, in fact, gone that way. You curse yourself. If you had checked sooner then he would have at least been somewhere close but if he really left, he would be long out of the building by now. 

You creep towards the door and slowly push it open. You hadn’t even left the floor since before this whole thing started. It was eerily quiet, but if you listened close you could hear some muffled shuffling from somewhere. 

You crept out, quickly realizing how dark it was. You pulled out your keychain which held a tiny flashlight that you used to navigate when it was dark in the apartment. 

You crept down the stairs, holding your breath with every step until you finally reached the floor below you. You can hear muffled sounds from beyond the door and slowly push it open, flashing the light down the hallway. 

It's too small and weak to penetrate the stifling darkness. The power was not on on this floor for some reason and that immediately set you on edge. You could still hear some shuffling and strange, raspy noises from within the darkness. 

“Simon..?” you call into the impenetrable, oppressive darkness. The noises stop for a moment and you swallow around the nervous lump in your throat, “Simon?” you call again, louder.

The noises return, shuffling, heavy footsteps advance on you. You strain your eyes to see past the weak illumination that your flashlight provides. You’re breathing heavily, you realize, anxiety making your lungs feel constricted as the footsteps get closer and closer.

All of the sudden, a disgusting, rotted face appears in your sights, arms outstretched towards you. You scream out in unbridled terror as it grabs you, its bony, sickening fingers latching onto your shoulders. You attempt to push it away and run but you trip over your own two feet in your panic. Your flashlight flies out of sight, its dim illumination casting down the hallway, leaving you to push at the undead corpse as it collapses on top of you. Its weight is more than you thought it would be, leaving your arms trembling as you struggle to keep it from falling on top of you. It fights your resistance and chomps its disgusting teeth at your face, attempting to get a bite out of your flesh. 

It reeks, you realize, like the smell of a dead animal you pass by on the street. It makes your stomach turn and you fear you’re going to throw up from the smell alone. The rotting skin of its chest slips and pulls away from the bone and muscle and you gag, tears coming to your eyes as you realize the very real and terrifying danger you’re in.

You have no way to get out of this. 

As you look down the hall, where the light barely pierced the inky depths, you can see more figures emerging from further down the hall, shuffling and rasping in interest at your fight with the one on top of you.

Tears fall down your temples and a sob bursts from your chest as you slowly come to terms that this is how you’re going to die. You can’t hold the sheer weight of the undead above you for much longer.

“S-Simon…” you call out, weak and strained. You know even if he’s nearby he won’t hear you. You have to try harder, get your voice out, shout for him. You swallow around your tears and panic, taking a full breath before shouting, “Simon! Please! Simon, help me!”

You don’t even register the door opening behind you. But you do notice when the weight of the corpse is gone, a knife stabbing into its skull before a large hand grabs you by the back of the shirt and drags you back into the stairwell. The undead follow after you, slamming themselves against the door as soon as it slams closed. 

You’re trembling and unable to blink or breathe as the shock of what just happened washes over you. 

“What the fuck were you thinking?!” Simon all but screams, grabbing you by the front of your shirt, dragging you onto unsteady feet that can’t hold you up before slamming you against the wall. You can still hear those zombies slamming against the door. Your ears are ringing and you barely register Simon shouting at you. 

He shakes you and it finally draws your attention to him. His eyes are wide, irises darting back and forth over your face. He doesn’t look nearly as angry as you would expect. Instead he looks…concerned. Scared.

“Simon…” you whisper, the tears not stopping as they fall down your cheeks. He’s the only thing holding you up right now, hands balled in the material of your shirt, keeping you pinned to the wall, “I-I was…I was looking for you…”

He’s panting, shoulders rising and falling as he struggles to compose himself, “Lookin’ for me?”

“Y-You said you were leaving and I…” you whimper, “I-I didn’t want you to go so…I went to find you…I didn’t think that…”

You see his jaw tense through his mask before he slowly lets go of your shirt. Your knees tremble under your own weight and your hands find purchase against his chest.

“Fuckin’ hell…” he mutters, stepping away from you with a heavy sigh, “Just don’t…do that again, got it?”

You nod your head, sniffling as you feel your tears slowly come to a stop, “Th-Thank you, Simon…for saving me…”

“Yeah,” he grunts, turning his back to you, storming back up the stairs to your floor. 

You unsteadily follow behind him, still a shaky and anxious mess. When you get into the apartment, Simon is in the kitchen, barely sparing you a glance.

“Go take a shower,” he orders you.

You linger in the doorway for a moment, hoping that he’ll look at you even for a second. But he doesn’t and you hang your head, skulking off to take your shower with a heavy heart. 

The night rolls around and Simon hasn’t said a word, putting you more on edge with each passing minute. He sits, manspreading on the couch with a glass of Kentucky bourbon in a glass, sipping on it and watching some old movie that he put on play. Usually, he asks you if you’d like to watch with him, but this time he didn’t and that just makes your heart ache even more. 

“Simon…” you venture to ask, casting a glance at him. His hard gaze doesn’t move from the TV, “I-I want to apologize–”

“For what?” he asks, the first words he’s spoken to you in hours. They’re cold and make you wince.

“F-For what I said…” you mutter, tucking your legs underneath you as you turn to look at him, “I…I was mean. I know you’re doing all you can for me and it wasn’t fair of me to get angry at you…I was just…startled, I guess.”

“You were naive,” he snaps, finally looking at you with a harsh glare, “You had no fuckin’ idea what those monsters were and you almost got yourself killed because of it.”

“Y-You’re right…” you whisper, feeling the tears pricking your eyes for the millionth time that day, “I’m sorry, Simon.”

He doesn’t respond, simply throwing back his glass of bourbon, downing it all before he stands up, “Sleep on the couch.”

The last thing you hear from him is his bedroom door slamming shut. You lay down that night, quietly crying into the pillow until you finally fell back asleep.

“Wake up!” a barking voice is what draws you out of your slumber. 

Still shaken up from yesterday’s previous events, you sit straight up, wild, fearful eyes looking around before your gaze falls upon Simon. He stands in front of the couch, dressed in full tactical gear. Even his balaclava is different, with a hard plate in the shape of a skull covering the front. He looks intimidating.

“Wh-What’re you doing?” you ask, turning yourself so your feet are on the floor. 

“We’re trainin’, get up,” he commands and you have no choice but to follow.

You find yourself following him out of the apartment and into the dimly lit hallway. It’s eerily quiet as always and you feel more intimidated than ever standing before him in nothing but some flimsy pajamas while he wears full gear. Even his gaze is different through that skull mask, hard and cold, looking down at you like you’re insignificant. 

It’s so different from before. He was so kind and patient with you before and you can tell that now he’s going to really train you. 

“What’re we doing today..?” you timidly ask, wringing your hands in front of yourself.

“Escaping,” he responds.

“Escaping?” you parrot back dumbly. 

His glare narrows down at you, “You’re going to try to get away from me and make it towards that exit.”

He points to the other end of the hallway, to the stairwell. You glance up at him, where he stands between you and your exit. 

“Okay…” you lick your lips nervously, “Do you want me to just run past you?”

“For now,” he drawls. He sounds almost bored, hands wrapped around the straps of his tactical vest.

You take a deep breath and attempt to bolt past him but his reflexes are frighteningly fast. His arm shoots out before you even realize it, catching you around your middle and halting you immediately. 

The air is punched out of your lungs from the force of his arms and you stumble back with a groan. 

“You’re goin’ to have to do better than that,” he says, looking down his nose at you like you had offended him with your poor attempt. 

You brace yourself again and attempt to run past him. This time, you attempt to fake him out and run in the other direction but it ends the same with his arm grappling around your middle and you still not any closer to the exit.

“Again!” he barks and you can’t help but wonder if this was how he was when he was training recruits in the military. 

You try again and again to run past him, duck under his arm, avoid his reach – everything to no avail. After several attempts, you’re left panting and frustrated. Simon is still as cool as a cucumber, staring at you in pure boredom as he awaits your next move. 

You run again, making rough contact with his arm once again. But this time you start fighting against his hold. You push with all your might, shoving at his arm and his side in an attempt to slip past him. 

“There you go,” he says, though it sounds more condescending than proud, “Fight me.”

You slam your fist down over his arm, successfully knocking it out of the way and giving you a chance to bolt past him. You have a clear view of the stairwell door and you can almost taste the success. 

But you’re stopped suddenly when a rough hand grabs the back of your shirt. You cry out in shock when he yanks you back towards him, carelessly tossing you to the floor. You hit the rough carpet harshly, the coarse material skinning your hands and knees and you cry out at the pain.

“Simon!” you chastise him, glaring up at him when he comes to stand in front of you, “That fucking hurt!”

“Oh, it hurt?” he sneers, squatting beside you, behemoth form still dwarfing your own as he gets down on your level, “It’s not supposed to feel good. This is training. You’re supposed to try and survive, not whine and cry because you fell on the floor.”

You sit on your burning knees and glare at him. He glares back at you, neither of you backing down. 

“Get up,” he commands, standing up, “Go again.”

By the time he allowed the training to be called off, your body was sore and bruised from the amount of times you’d been thrown to the floor. Your knees burn and ache from where the skin had been rubbed off and you fight back tears as you watch the dried blood crust on your skin. 

Simon is no more rough for wear than he was before – all your hitting, kicking, pushing, and biting hadn’t deterred him in the slightest. He wasn’t even winded. 

Worse more, you hadn’t made it anywhere near the door. 

You weren’t sure how Simon felt about it. If he was mad or disappointed, he didn’t say. As soon as you got into the apartment, he went about making dinner after ordering you to wash up. 

When you got out of the shower, he tossed a first aid kit to you and silently sat down in the kitchen to eat. 

Usually, you would sit with him but you found yourself deciding to eat on the couch by yourself. A sense of loneliness settled upon you that you hadn’t felt since before you had moved into this apartment with him and you find yourself hiding your tears in your food. 

Once again, you’re sleeping on the couch. You wouldn’t have minded it if it didn’t feel so much like a punishment. You felt like a dog banished to sleep in the dog house and you can’t help but curl in on yourself at the cold, empty feeling that it causes. 

The next morning follows much the same with Simon startling you awake with a barked order. Your body aches and your wounds sting with every movement you make as you drag yourself behind him to the hallway.

“Do we have to do this again today, Simon?” you ask hopelessly, “I’m really tired…”

“Do you think those undead freaks are going to care if you’re tired?” he snaps at you, arms crossed, making him appear even bigger than he already was, “You’re goin’ to learn how to escape from holds.”

“Simon…” you start to complain but a sharp look from him has the words dying on your tongue and you hand your head in defeat. 

He’s no more gentle than he was yesterday with you, rough grips and manhandling you around to fit his needs. He barks in your ear, ordering what you need to do and when to break various holds that he has on your body. 

He feels so much stronger and more powerful than those zombies had. At least they were mindless and slow. Simon was fast and smart. 

“Put your hand under mine to break the hold!” he shouts, clearly frustrated the more you fuck up breaking his holds. 

“Not like that! Are you daft?” he grits through clenched teeth, “You’re goin’ to fuckin wind up dead if you keep this up!”

You feel your heart rate speed up and you find yourself almost panicking under his completely oppressive energy. His shouting only sets you more on edge and the tears begin to prick at your eyes once again. 

“None of those fuckin’ tears,” he snarls, tightening his hold on you when you squirm and attempt to rid his body weight off of yours, “Do what I told you! You can break the hold if you just fuckin’ focus!”

“Simon, I-I don’t want to do this anymore!” you cry, the tears tumbling down your cheeks as you cry out the words. Your cheeks feel hot and you can barely catch your breath as you weakly punch at his chest.

“There’s no tappin’ out,” he snaps, tightening his grip on you even more. Your body aches where he holds and you know you’re going to be feeling those bruises for days to come. 

“Simon!” you practically screech, freeing one hand and harshly slamming your fist down over the hard faceplate. 

It seems to startle him enough into loosening his hold and you manage to kick back away from him in your panic, foot hitting him square in the chest in an effort to propel yourself away – putting as much distance as fast as you can between the two of you.

“Simon…” you whimper, voice wobbling, “I am not one of your soldiers. You need to stop trying to train me like I am!”

You watch him adjust his jaw through his mask before he pops his neck. He doesn’t say anything, just stares at you and every hair on your body stands up in pure fear. 

He’s on top of you before you even have the chance to say another word. You cry out when the force of his body forces you back and your head cracks harshly against the floor. Your vision blacks out from the force and you groan in pain but he doesn’t stop, a rough forearm pinning against your throat, cutting off your air.

“That was good,” he says, voice cold and devoid of any emotion, “You managed to escape, now do it again!”

Your hands push weakly against him, but you’re worn out and your head is starting to hurt like hell. You open your mouth to say something but his hold on your throat ceases any words from escaping. 

You reach up to his face and his cold gaze narrows at you, “You already tried that. It won’t work again.”

But instead of hitting him, your fingers wrap around the face plate and you attempt to push it off – hoping that it’ll obscure his vision enough but he shakes you off with ease. 

He catches your gaze and what he sees gives him pause. Wide, teary eyes, red rimmed and filled to the brim with fear. Tears wet your cheeks and he finally notices the way your entire body is tense and trembling beneath him. 

“P-Please,” you finally find your voice when his weight eases a bit off of your throat, “I-I don’t want to do this anymore, Simon, please.”

That has his own eyes widening and you take his slackened hold as an opportunity to run away. He watches you scramble up from your spot on the floor and stumble back to the apartment, disappearing within with a slam that makes him flinch. He looks down at his own hands and finds that he can’t conjure up any thoughts that aren’t about you.

You hear him enter the apartment, his heavy footfalls pacing around the living room. You’re hiding in the bathroom, leaning against the door with your knees against your chest to muffle your cries. 

He enters the bedroom and pauses, no doubt looking for you before he approaches the bathroom and you feel a brief ping of fear that he’s going to open the door but instead he softly knocks. 

“Will you come out so we can talk?” he asks, voice holding none of the cold, harshness that it had for the last few days. 

“G-Go away, Simon,” you sniffle.

You can hear him sigh before he follows your request and steps away from the door. You can hear him linger in the bedroom for several more minutes, kicking his boots off before he’s quietly closing the bedroom door and leaving. 

The silence and loneliness sinks in once more and you find yourself sobbing into your knees all over again. Your head kills and you feel almost nauseous through your cries from the headache but you can’t stop yourself. 

You have no idea how long you cry for but before you know it, the bedroom door opens once again and you can hear the floorboards creak under his weight as he approaches the bathroom door once again.

“I made something for you to eat,” he says through the door, “Figured you might be hungry.” At the idea of food, your stomach growls, “It’ll be waiting for you at the table when you want it.”

You listen to him walk away and you know this is his way of luring you out of the bathroom. Part of you desperately wants to spite him for being so mean to you and refuse his food but the growling in your stomach is too much to bear and you can’t help but clamber to your feet and quietly pull the door open. 

When you reach the living room, Simon is facing the TV, giving no indication that he realizes you’ve come out of your hiding place. You sneak into the kitchen to see a bowl of soup sitting nicely at an empty spot. You take a seat and quickly devour the entire bowl, barely taking a break to breathe before it’s completely empty. 

You place it in the sink and carefully sneak back out of the kitchen, intending to slide right past him but in your haste you fail to notice that he’s no longer sitting on the couch. Instead, you come face to face with him sitting at the foot of his bed, clearly waiting for you. 

You freeze when you see him and all too soon that headache comes racing back to the forefront of your mind. 

Simon’s no longer wearing the skull plate and instead wears his usual black balaclava with the skull print on it. He wears a t-shirt and sweatpants, obviously having let himself get comfortable while you hid in the bathroom earlier. 

He looks up at you the second you step into the room and the two of you halt in a stalemate, simply staring at one another while you wait for the other to make the first move. 

You’re the first to break eye contact when a heavy throb goes through your head, making you close your eyes and bring your hand to your head until it passes. You hear the bed creak when Simon stands up before his hands are cupping your cheeks.

“You hit your head, didn’t you?” he asks, soft and gentle. 

You can’t stop yourself from glaring and snapping, “No thanks to you.”

His gaze softens as his hand finds its way to the back of your head, ever so softly prodding at the sizable bump that’s there, “I’m sorry, love.”

“If you’re sorry then why did you do it?” you find those damned tears returning all over again as you continue to glare up at him, “I told you I didn’t like it and I wanted to stop.”

“I know…” he whispers, hands once again cupping your cheeks, thumbing your tears away.

“What was your problem, Simon?” you tearfully ask, sniffling pathetically, “You hurt me. You were scary – scarier than those stupid zombies downstairs. Why did you do that?”

“I got…I was…” he struggled to find the right words before he stepped away from you with a troubled expression, “I was angry— scared. I just—I don’t know.”

“You were scared?” you scoff, “I’m the one who got attacked.”

“You think that wasn’t scary for me?” he asks in disbelief, “You almost got eaten alive on my watch.”

“You sure have a funny way of showing it,” you sniffle, angrily storming over to the bed, letting yourself flop down on the comfortable mattress for the first time in days.

“I know,” he whispers, “Just let me explain, okay?”

You lay there silently, listening to his weight shift where he stands. You take notice of how his scent lingers much more on the blankets now that he’s slept on it. It smells good, you note, musky and delicate. He doesn’t wear anything that smells particularly overpowering. 

“I’m sorry,” he says again, “Ever since this shit happened, I’ve been driving myself crazy. I lost contact with my team, my friends. I’m not able to get anymore information on what's goin’ on outside. I’m worried about you, I’m trying my hardest to make sure you can go out there and survive on your own if you need to. I feel like I’m going crazy and I’m scared because I’ve never felt this out of control before.”

You sit up and turn to face him, “How long have you been feeling like this, Simon..?”

“A while,” he mutters, turning his back on you when your gaze starts to feel like too much, “And then you called me a monster and I just…” he trails off, seemingly unsure of how to explain his feelings properly.

“I’m sorry for that, Simon,” you mutter sincerely, reaching out to grab his arm, urging him to turn around, “I never should have said that. And I didn’t mean it, really.”

“Well, you were right, weren’t you?” he scoffs, “I am a monster. Fuck, look at what I did to you – how I treated you. I was punishing you and I never should have.”

“We both made mistakes,” you compromise with a wobbly smile, “We’re dealing with a lot, right? The fucking world is ending and we’ve been trapped in this godforsaken building for who knows how long. It’ll get easier.”

He stares at you for a long moment, lashes fluttering as his gaze softens. You can’t find it in yourself to break eye contact. After a long moment, he seems to decide on something before reaching up and yanking the mask covering his face off. 

You feel your breath halt in your chest as your eyes widen, taking in every inch of his newly revealed face. His soft, brown eyes are a juxtaposition to the rest of his ruggedly handsome face. You stand up, never letting your eyes stray from him, a feeling of pure awe coming over you.

“You’re so handsome, Si,” you whisper, reaching forward to brush your fingers over a scar that cuts through his eyebrow to his eyelid, “It’s nice to finally see you.”

“I wanted you to see the real me,” he whispers, “Not the asshole soldier I was.”

“I’m glad you’ve trusted me with this,” you let your fingers wander along his skin, feeling the stubble on his jaw that he hadn’t yet shaved. 

“I need to tell you,” he sounds breathy, reaching up and catching your hand in his, pressing your palm flat against his cheek, “I was so scared when I heard you callin’ for me. I thought I was goin’ to be too late and I’d watch you die. I was terrified that I would lose you.”

“Simon…” you whisper in awe, watching how his soft, brown eyes display every tumultuous emotion that he experiences, “I’m sorry. I won’t do anything to worry you again.”

“I want you by my side for as long as you’re able,” he whispers, throat moving as he swallows.

“I won’t go anywhere,” you agree, stepping closer to him, “I promise.”

He leans in at the same time as you, meeting you for a sweet, tender kiss. It lasts only a second before you’re both pulling back to look in each other's eyes. Then, you’re both surging forward for a hungry, heated kiss. 

His hands grip your waist, squeezing there as he deepens the kiss. You whimper under his touch, standing on your tip-toes to match the intensity of his kiss. 

He moves you backwards, your knees hitting the edge of the bed, causing you to topple down. Simon follows, catching himself on his hands on either side of your head. He only breaks the kiss for a moment to move you further up the bed, easily manhandling you so your head is in the pillows before he’s kissing you all over again.

His hands are rough as they travel over your body, slipping your shirt up just enough to let him touch your bare sides. You quickly realize you’re still wearing your sleep clothes and that you don’t have a bra on. 

Clearly, Simon was aware because his hand quickly cups your bare breast with a rough, callused hand. His thumb finds your nipple, flicking over the bud as you whine into his mouth. 

He pulls back suddenly, cheeks flushed before he’s fumbling with the hem of your shirt.

“Arms up, sweetheart,” he coos, sickly sweet. 

You follow his orders and eagerly lift your arms up for him to tug the fabric of your shirt over your head. Once your breasts are bared to him, he’s leaning down to wrap his lips around one perked nipple while his fingers busy themselves with the other.

You cry out at the feeling of his teeth nipping at the sensitive bud, hands tangling in his soft, curly hair. He groans against your breast at the feeling of your pulling at his hair before he pulls back just a bit, breathlessly whispering, “Such perfect tits.”

“Simon…” you whimper, letting yourself relax into the bed as he switches to mouth at your other nipple, leaving the other to harden in the cool air before his hand travels down your stomach to your shorts, easily slipping underneath the fabric.

“Simon!” you call out again when you feel the heat of his hand cup your folds through your panties. 

“Shh, just let me do the work, love,” he mumbled, muffled by the fact he refuses to part from suckling on your nipple. 

His tongue drags over your breast, nipping and sucking marks into your skin. As he works the muscle, his hand in your panties remains stationary, just letting you feel the heat of it against your core. The teasing presence only makes you pulse and drool into your panties. You’re positive the fabric must be sticking to you by now from how wet you’ve become from playing with your breasts. 

“Your tits are so sensitive,” he mumbles, almost to himself, “Does it feel good, darlin’?”

“Yeah,” you breathe, arching your back to offer up your chest to him all over again.

He grins, a crooked little smile that makes your heart flutter. It was so nice to finally see him smile. 

But instead of mouthing at your breasts again, he leans back on his heels and pulls his hand from your panties. You whine at the loss but it’s cut short when he hooks his fingers into them and tugs them down your legs. You lift your hips to assist him but find yourself wincing when an ache goes through your body.

He notices and gently runs the palm of his hands up your thighs, urging you to relax.

“You sore, love?” he asks, voice filled with what you can only call guilt.

“A little…” you admit, biting your lip, “My thighs are killing me, actually.”

He shakes his head at himself and leans down, pressing a kiss next to the scrape on one of your knees as his hands slowly begin to knead the sore muscles in your thighs. You sigh and let your eyes flutter at the feeling. 

With your eyes closed, you don’t realize he leans down until you feel a hot, wet tongue slide from your pubic bone to your sternum. Your cunt clenches pathetically at the feeling. When you open your eyes, Simon’s pretty, brown eyes are half-lidded and his tongue hangs out of his mouth. You can’t resist cupping the back of his head and pulling him for a kiss, whimpering and moaning against his mouth.

“Fingers or tongue?” he asks, muffled and messy against your lips. 

“What?” your hazy mind can’t quite comprehend what he’s asking of you.

“Do you want my fingers or my tongue?” he reiterates, “I want to make you cum.”

You whimper at that, “B-Both!”

He scoffs, full brows furrowing, “Greedy.”

You find yourself blushing at that but he doesn’t deny your request. He sinks down your body, peppering kisses down your body on the way until he kneels on the floor at the foot of the bed. 

He grabs your hips and effortlessly yanks you down so your legs hang off the edge of the bed. 

He spreads your thighs apart and you find yourself holding your breath, watching through your lashes as he trails kisses up your thigh, getting closer to where you want him the most. You’re trembling under his attention and it makes you clench pathetically around absolutely nothing. You’re sure he can see the way your cunt drools and leaks with every small kiss he peppers against your skin. 

Just when he gets close, he pulls back and kisses back down towards your knee. The teasing has you wound taut, feeling as if you’re almost on the edge without him ever properly touching you.

It feels like hours that he does it, kissing up and down your thighs. Occasionally, he nips at the skin there, swirling his tongue over the burning marks he leaves behind to soothe the sting. Finally, he moves his hand and you think he’s going to finally give you something but all he does is spread your folds apart with two fingers, exposing your hole and clit to the cool bedroom air. The action makes you whine but he pays you no mind. 

He carries on kissing your thighs and nipping at your skin. No matter how much you rut your hips, hoping to entice him into touching you and giving you what you really need, he ignores it. He ignores your whines and the cries of his name, ignores the way your cunt clenches and drools around nothing, clit twitching from how much teasing you’re enduring. 

The little bud aches, throbbing as it begs for anything – any little touch that he has to offer. He could blow air upon the nub right now and you’re sure you would explode in pure pleasure. 

When you sob his name, broken and needier than you’ve ever heard yourself, he finally looks up. His eyelids are heavy, concealing half of his iris and it makes him look positively fucked out. 

“Look at me,” he commands, licking his lips slowly, “Right in the eyes, let me see you properly.”

You force yourself to meet his penetrating gaze, almost struggling to compose yourself. You find yourself trapped in the eye contact, almost paralyzed under his intoxicating gaze. He holds you there for what feels like minutes but in reality is probably just a few seconds. 

His fingers finally hone in on your clit, pressing against the twitching, hardened bud. You cum immediately, still locked in that intoxicating eye contact. You cry out, hands slapping against the bed as he draws the orgasm out of you with slow circles on the little bud, sticky clicking sounds filling the room and mixing with your wild cries of pleasure. It seems like the high never stops, more and more cum gushing from your cunt and dripping down to stain the comforter beneath you. 

Simon watches you with keen attention, taking in every expression you make as he makes you cum against his fingers, the bud throbbing wildly until the orgasm finally dissipates. 

When you finally sag against the bed, your thighs fall completely open as the post-orgasm exhaustion quickly hits. You’re left trembling and twitching through the aftershocks, pretty pussy still drooling with every clench of your walls.

Simon takes the opportunity of you coming down to strip himself. He tugs his shirt off over his head and lets his sweatpants drop the floor, carelessly kicking them away. His gaze never leaves you, never leaves that twitching little cunt between your legs.

There’s a slick film of your cum coating your folds and his mouth fucking waters. 

Your eyes fly open, not even realizing that you had closed them, when he suddenly cups the back of your thighs and pins you wide open for him.

“Simon…” you pathetically coo, reaching down to tangle your fingers in his hair when he comes within reach.

“So sweet for me,” he coos, kissing your thigh once again and you’re scared that he’s going to tease you all over again, “A good orgasm got you nice and sweet, huh?”

“Mhm,” you mutter, dazedly looking at him as you feel his breath on your sensitive cunt. 

That alone makes you clench around nothing. You nearly whimper out loud when you see his tongue fall from his mouth, glistening with spit before he licks a slow, wide stripe between your folds. 

When he comes back up, he holds his tongue out and lets you see the creamy mess of your cum left behind. He makes a show of swallowing every drop in his mouth, making your cheeks flush in pure embarrassment at such a lewd display. 

You had no idea Simon would be so fucking filthy in bed but the way his eyes roll back at your taste tells you all that you need to know. 

He loudly slurps your clit between his lips, swirling his tongue around the sloppy bud as he whines and groans into your cunt. You tug harshly at his hair at the overwhelming feeling of having your clit doted on so expertly. 

His hands keep you pinned open, allowing him to slip his tongue inside you, occasionally taking a moment to visibly swallow every drop of your slick so you can see the way he absolutely savors your taste.

He swirls that offending tongue around your clit again, slurping it back into his mouth before two fingers are prodding at your entrance. You clench against him, the excitement of finally being filled with something making you whimper. Just the sound of you so eager makes him almost want to cum completely untouched. 

Your cum generously coats his face and he absolutely loves it. He pulls away suddenly, dark eyes locking onto your face as he pants from how lost he was in eating you out. He slowly presses two fingers inside you, letting them slide in, hugged by the plushness of your walls.

“You’re so fuckin’ wet, love,” he coos, moaning sympathetically when you cry out from the feeling of being stretched on his fingers, “And so warm too, fuck.”

He decides, in that moment, that he doesn’t care if the world is ending outside, he feels nothing but bliss with you. He never wants this to end, he wants to get completely lost in the pure intoxication of you. 

He leans down, flattening his tongue against your clit once again. The feeling is heightened now that he’s got his thick fingers stuffed inside you. You clench around him at the feeling of his tongue on the sensitive bud once more. 

He suddenly crooks his fingers and your legs helplessly kick in the air at the overwhelming feeling of him pressing and prodding against that gooey little spot inside you. Your hips rabbit up and you practically wail at the overwhelming sensations he’s attacking you with. You squeal his name so sweetly before he finally backs off a bit, letting you sink back into the soft cushions of the bed.

He’s completely drunk off of you, off the creamy cum you gush out for him to lick up, off the lovely sounds you let out from how good he makes you feel. His cock is so painfully hard and he wants so badly to wrap his hand around himself but he knows he’ll blow his load the second he does, so he refrains. 

To distract himself from the ache in his cock, he doubles his focus on you and making you feel good. His fingers crook upwards again, prodding your g-spot again with renewed vigor. You cry out, your eyes rolling to the back of your head when he sucks your clit into his mouth, the suction making your thighs tremble. 

“I-I wanna cum!” you cry out, fingers still tugging harshly at his hair. 

He groans against you but doesn’t dare to part from you, too focused on bringing you to your high to actually goad you into it. His fingers move inside you, fucking you nice and deep, making sure he’s working that sweet little spot inside you as he continues to suck on your clit. 

It doesn’t take long before your entire body stiffens and you toss your head back. The choked out cry is music to his ears and his own eyes roll back when he feels the way your walls tighten around him, soaking his fingers generously. Your clit throbs in his mouth before he releases his suction on it, instead choosing to lick the pulsing little bud with the flat of his tongue to gently ease you through the high. 

You’re pushing his head away long before he’s ready to part but he willingly backs off nonetheless. His chin is wet with your cum, even dripping down his neck and the sight makes you flush. There’s a loud, squishy noise when he slowly pulls his fingers from the hot clutch of your cunt. 

“Scoot back for me, darlin’,” he commands you, slurring a little before he pops his fingers into his mouth, sucking them clean of the mess you left behind. 

You do as he says, shakily pushing yourself back so you can lay your head in the pillows. With Simon standing at the foot of the bed, you finally get the chance to take a look at him. 

He’s obviously incredibly well built, broad and firm in all the right places. Most notably, he has numerous scars, some that looked like bullet wounds and others that were long and thin. 

“Are all those from the military?” you find yourself asking as he carefully crawls onto the bed, jostling you as the mattress moves under his weight.

“Yeah,” he breathes, leaning down to press his lips against yours.

You let him handle your body as he pleases, spreading your legs so he can comfortably situate himself between them. His cock, hard and heavy, rests against your folds and you find your eyes going wide at the sight of it.

“Somethin’ the matter?” he chuckles, like he can hear what you’re thinking. 

“That’s not going to fit,” you breathe, unable to tear your gaze off the twitching, fat length of him.

“‘Course it will, love,” he breathes, pecking your lips again, letting his lips trail down over your jaw, “I worked you open real good, all you gotta do is relax and let me in.”

With a minute adjustment of his hips, the tip prods your entrance. He grips the base of his length, carefully pushing forward, mouth dropping open as he feels your hot, wet walls spread around the head of him.

“That’s it, sweetheart,” he grunts, “Jus’ let me do the work.”

Your hands fly down to grip his forearms, nails biting harder into the skin there the deeper he sinks into you. The middle of his cock is the fattest, giving you an almost painful stretch that makes your face pinch up in a way that Simon doesn’t like.

He brings one hand to his mouth, licking his thumb before carefully pressing the digit against that sensitive bud. You whimper at the feeling, cunt clutching tight around him, easing more of his length inside. He circles your clit a few more times, watching your face for any clear signs of discomfort. Before long, his hips meet yours, filling you absolutely full to the brim in a way no one ever had before. 

He plants both hands on either side of your head, abandoning your clit in favor of simply rutting his hips against yours. His large body hovers over you, shielding you from anything outside of him and you find yourself completely lost in everything that is him – how full he makes you feel, how nice he smells, how safe you feel trapped beneath him like you are. 

Your hands wind around his neck, pulling him down so his chest presses against yours. Your breasts squish against his chest and he finds his eyes flickering down just to look at them. The sight makes you smile despite yourself – it’s cute, you think.

Tangling your fingers in his soft curls once again, you bring him down for a kiss. He’s still slowly, carefully rutting his hips against yours, his lower abdomen sliding against your clit as his cock stirs inside you, stretching you and hitting every sweet little spot inside you. 

You whimper into his mouth, gasping at the way he makes you feel so full and good while he barely does anything. Your knees bracket against his ribs, squeezing him so tightly you wonder if it hurts but he just continues to kiss you and circle his hips. 

“Wanna feel you cum around me,” he whispers, barely parting from your lips to request it, “Just like this, cover my cock. Be good for me.”

You knew you wouldn’t be able to disobey even if you wanted to. With the way he stirs you up and drags against every tender spot inside you all while grinding against your clit the way he is, you don’t stand a chance. Your third orgasm creeps up on you and your back arches just as it washes over you.

Simon groans at the feeling of you cumming around him for the first time – the tight, wet clutch of your cunt feeling better than he ever could have dreamed. As he watches you writhe in his bed, moaning and whimpering his name, he’s overcome with a plethora of feelings that just melt his heart. 

He can’t resist pulling you in for another kiss, cupping your jaw as he pulls his hips back until just the head of his cock remains buried in your cunt. You’re still working on coming down from the orgasm he just gave you but he’s greedy – he wants to feel it again. He wants to fuck the orgasm out of you, make you ride it out and gush all over him.

He needs to show you how good he can be for you, hoping that this alone can get across just how much you mean to him. He’s never been the best with words, so he can only hope that this is enough for now.

Your hands press against his chest, aimlessly pushing at him from the overwhelming way he fucks you. You’re so sensitive, pushed into cumming more times than anyone had ever made you before. But he doesn’t show any signs of slowing or stopping. He’s a machine, built for stamina and he’s on a fucking mission now – to make you feel as good as he possibly can. 

You’re attempting to push him away, to give your poor, overstimulated body a chance to come down. But he’s having none of it. 

“Hands off, love,” he commands breathlessly. But you just stare up at him with dazed, teary eyes, panting and sweaty. He clicks his tongue, “You ignorin’ me, sweetheart?”

He grapples your wrists in his one hand, pulling yours away from his chest and pinning them above your head. He uses this new hold as leverage to really fuck you, pulling back and sinking back in as deep as he possibly can. His tip kisses your cervix, making your thighs tense up at the twinge of pain that comes with having him so deep. 

But the pain mixes so addictively with the pleasure that you find yourself getting completely lost in the slow, deep rhythm that he sets. Every time he sinks balls deep, his hips slap against yours and he rubs up deliciously against your clit. The pleasure on your bud doesn’t last long before he’s pulling back again, never allowing you to fully build up to another delicious high. 

Simon is lost in the way you whimper and whine. He can swear that he’s never heard anything as incredible as you being denied the pleasure he had been so generous with so far. He likes the desperate look in your eyes; it makes him feel amazing to know that you need him to make you feel good. He’s in charge of your pleasure in that moment and he finds himself relishing in that feeling of control over you. 

You look so sweet beneath him, pinned and helpless with teary eyes looking up at him. Your pupils are blown wide from the pleasure his cock brings you as he continues to fuck you nice and deep. 

Usually, Simon is a fast and rough kind of guy, but he finds himself thinking that he could definitely get used to a pace like this more often. As long as it’s you that’s underneath him. 

It doesn’t take you very long to break, those pretty tears falling down your cheeks as you breathlessly plead with him, “Please, Simon,” your voice cracks so cutely, “I want more!”

He chuckles under his breath and leans down, pressing a tender kiss against your temple before whispering, “What’s stoppin’ you from takin’ more?”

That seems to set you off. You’re bracing your feet on the bed, rutting your hips, rocking yourself against his cock. A moan rips from his chest at the sight of you using his cock like that. His heavy balls press against you and the feeling makes his cock throb, making him realize how badly he needs to cum. But he doesn’t want to give up this little show you’re putting on for him so soon. 

You’re so, so wet that he can feel how your messy little cunt squishes around him. You shamelessly soak every inch of him the more you work your own pussy on his fat cock. You tug your hands free from his grip and he’s left clenching the pillows in his fist when he watches your fingers descend.

He thinks you’re going to go for your clit, to push yourself over the edge like you so deserved for being so good for him. But instead, you reach for your own tits. The breath punches out of his lungs as the sight of you meanly pinching and tweaking your nipples as you continue to rock yourself against him.

Simon feels his balls tighten at the sight and he almost thinks he’s going to cum but he suddenly pulls his cock out. You wail in complete misery at the loss, tearfully watching him wrap his hand around the base of his cock, pinching off the impending orgasm.

You flop back down onto the bed, sniffling pathetically as you glare at him for ruining the orgasm you were so beautifully working yourself up to. He smiles crookedly at you, cupping the backs of your knees, crudely pinning them to your chest so your pretty, wet cunt is open and vulnerable to the way he suddenly stuffs himself back inside. 

With you completely pinned beneath him in a press, you can’t do anything except cry out and wail in pleasure as he finally fucks you fast and hard. His balls slap lewdly against your ass, your arousal dripping off of them. 

His eyes are locked on the way you’re stretched so wide around the girth of him. You’re creaming around him, a milky ring left in your wake every time he pulls out. He doesn’t give you much chance to breathe or collect yours, simply fucking you with everything he has. It’s loud, wet, and fucking messy. 

“F-Fuck,” he chokes on the word, voice breaking as it comes out. He’s so close that it hurts, “Play with yourself for me, love, rub your clit.”

Your hand flies down to do as you’re told without a second thought. It only takes a few, quick circles around the hard little bud before you’re cumming with a cute little squeal. Your feet kick helplessly in the air, toes curling from how hard you cum around him. 

Simon groans at the sight and feeling of you losing yourself on his cock. You continue to swirl and tap at your clit, forcing yourself to cum harder and harder until you’re squirting around him with a choked off sob of his name. 

Simon’s hips never still or falter, fucking you fast and deep to work you through the orgasm. Your cum splatters across his hips, thighs, and chest. It makes his eyes roll up into his head before he lets his head fall back. His jaw opens and he moans, loud and deep as his own orgasm finally washes over him. 

His pace falters as you lay there twitching and crying, a few trembling thrusts of his hips as his cock spits rope after rope of cum inside you. He cums longer and harder than he has in a very long time. He continues with short, aborted little thrusts on his sensitive cock as he continues to cum.

Even when the orgasm dissipates, he finds himself fucking into the creamy mess drooling out of your twitching cunt. 

“S-Simon-!” you choke out, nails clawing down his shoulders, “S-Sensitive!”

“I know, love,” he pants, almost deliriously, “J-Just one more. G-Gotta fill you up again.”

You can’t do anything but lay back and let him use your cunt as he works to force another orgasm out of his overstimulated cock. He’s gasping and whining as he moves his hips, pulling his cock out only to stuff it back inside. A mixture of your cum and his drips down, soaking his cock, pelvis, and balls. It’s a heady, lewd mess that he can’t bring himself to worry about now but he knows it’ll be a pain to clean up later. 

You’re trembling and twitching with every one of his movements, tears dried and new on your cheeks. He feels a pang of remorse for you, you’re tired and overstimulated but he just needs to wring this one last orgasm out and then he’ll let you rest.

“You can be good for me, huh?” he coos sweetly, “Just be sweet and let me, fuck, use this pretty little cunt, yeah?”

“Y-Yeah,” you whimper, nodding your head as your eyelids flutter in exhaustion.

Simon leans down, pressing his lips against yours. You both get lost in the kiss, with your arms wrapped around his neck. He loves how it feels to have you stuffed on his cock while your pretty, sweet body twitches and trembles beneath him. He knows it probably hurts by now and the fact you’re just laying there and letting him use you like this has him reaching his second high. 

He chokes on a moan, gasping as he cums for the final time. It’s much more lackluster than his first one but he still fills you up just like you both needed. His cock twitches almost painfully inside you as he slowly rocks his hips, wincing at the overstimulation. 

After a few, still moments, he pulls his length free from the soft plushness of your cunt and rolls off of you. You’re both panting, laying on your backs on the bed as you come back to yourselves.

You’re the first one to move, rolling onto your side and wrapping yourself around him. Simon finds himself smiling when he feels the sweet way you snuggle against him, seeking his comfort automatically. 

You start shivering, the mess of cum and sweat on your body causing you to become cold. He urges you to sit up despite your protests. 

“Let’s take a shower and sleep,” he offers sweetly, supporting your shaky body to the bathroom.

He continues to support you and hold you close through the shower. He finds himself grateful that there’s still hot water because you both certainly need it after such a messy tryst in his bed. 

You’re the first to fall asleep, tucked against his chest with your arms wrapped around him like a little koala. His hand strokes up and down your back, just staring into the inky blackness of his bedroom. 

Part of him feels like it’s all a dream, to have someone so sweet tucked against him, offering him comfort and feeling safe as they snooze peacefully. A sense of fierce protectiveness washes over him as he finds himself going through plans in his head – what the future may hold.

He’s torn from his thoughts when you shoot up from your deep sleep with a gasp. Your head wildly turns, looking around the room. His hand finds purchase on your back, making you jump before relaxing immediately in recognition.

“Bad dream?” he asks, tugging you gently to lay you back down against his chest.

“Yeah,” you whisper, “I dreamt that I was trapped with them in that hallway again.”

He hums, pressing a kiss to the top of your head, wrapping his arms tightly around you to make sure you feel secure. You go still for a long time and he thinks you fell asleep again but then you ask him a question that surprises him.

“Who are those people in the photos?” you quietly question, “In your living room.”

He hums, rubbing a rough hand up and down your shoulder and arm, “My teammates. Friends, I guess.”

“You guess?” you chuckle.

“Yeah,” he breathes, “Task Force 141; Captain John Price, and Seargets John ‘Soap’ MacTavish and Kyle ‘Gaz’ Garrick.”

“Soap is a silly name,” you comment, grinning up at him, resting your chin against his chest, “What about you?”

“Lieutenant Simon ‘Ghost’ Riley,” he responds with ease. 

“Do you know where they are?” you ask.

It’s an innocent question but it sends a pang of hurt to his chest. If he were a weaker, less trained man, he may have felt tears pricking his eyes, “I don’t know,” he pauses for a moment before continuing, “I was in contact with Soap when everything started goin’ to shit. Lost contact with him though. He’s a tough bastard though, I’m sure he’s fine somewhere out there. I don’t know where the other two were or are.”

“If they’re even half as good as you, I’m sure they’re all fine,” you offer optimistically. 

Simon hums again, reaching a hand up to brush a stray flyaway off of your forehead. His big hand cups your cheek, stroking his thumb over your lips which you offer a gentle kiss against. 

“All I’m worried about now is you,” he confesses softly, “As long as you’re safe, I’ll be happy. I’ll do anything to make sure you’re okay.”

“I am,” you smile, laying back down to nuzzle against his chest, “I’m okay as long as you’re here.”

He wraps his arms around you again and closes his eyes, letting himself sleep peacefully with you held safe against him.

It’s not even a week later that you’re sitting on the couch with him, peacefully watching a movie with a full belly after cooking a quick dinner with him, that you hear a loud, mechanical thump and you’re plunged into complete silence and darkness. Your heart jumps and races in your chest, mindlessly grappling onto Simon’s arm as he sits still beside you.

“What happened?” you ask, whispering as if you’re scared to speak any louder.

“Power went out,” he responds, not sounding the least bit perturbed, “Knew it was comin’. Water’s probably out now too.”

“What do we do?” you ask, the tremor of fear in your voice practically breaking his heart. 

He stands up and you whimper in fear when he’s out of your reach. You can hear him moving around in the dark before a bright, blinding light lands on you. 

“We can’t stay here for much longer,” he responds, “We’ll have to move out and find somewhere with more resources.”

“How long have you been planning this?” you ask, getting to your feet to follow him down the hall to the bedroom.

“Ever since the news stopped reportin’,” he responds, grabbing a large backpack from the closet, “Let’s pack up.”

You linger beside him and he looks at you with a raised brow, “I’m scared, Simon.”

His gaze softens and he walks up to you, cupping your cheeks tenderly, “I won’t let anything happen to you,” he promises, “We’re goin’ to go out, find a small place to hunker down. We’ll look for a generator or a vehicle and get somewhere safe. You trust me, don’t you?”

You nod your head, “Of course I do.”

“Good,” he smiles, kissing your forehead, “Now take this backpack and fill it with what’s left of our canned food, alright? I’m goin’ to pack everything else we need, don’t worry about a thing.”

He offers you a flashlight, which you gratefully take and click on. You’re glad that he gives you an easy task to focus on. You take the smaller backpack he offers you and make your way to the kitchen. You only have about 5 cans of food left and you carefully place them inside the bag before opening the refrigerator to pack a few full bottles of water that you have stored in there. You make sure to toss in a can opener just in case before you place the backpack on the couch. 

Simon emerges from the room with the large, military backpack slung over his shoulder. 

“You get it all?” he asks, taking a seat to shove his boots onto his feet.

“Yeah and a couple water bottles,” you respond, approaching him slowly.

“That’s perfect,” he praises, looking over at you, “You should go get dressed. Jeans and a hoodie. Put your sneakers on and make sure they’re tight, got it?”

You nervously do as you’re told, disappearing into the bedroom to quickly dress yourself under the flashlight. You can hear Simon moving around in the living room, heavy boots thumping against the floor with every step he takes. 

You toss the hoodie over your head and make your way back to Simon, who stands in the living room, looking out the window. The sun is just beginning to come up over the horizon, casting a dim amount of sunlight to come through. 

He turns to look at you when he hears you approach. 

“There you go,” he hums, pulling the hoodie up over your head and tightening the strings, “Keep your neck covered. We’ll find you some better clothing somewhere along the way.”

You nod your head and take a glance over his shoulder out the window. You can barely see the ground from your position but you can see people shuffling around on the streets below. A pang of fear goes through you as you realize that they’re most definitely not normal people – the streets are crawling with those undead freaks. 

Simon leads you to the door and unsheaths a weapon for you – a machete he had taught you to wield with relative ease. You grip it in your hands, nervously twirling it around until you find a comfortable position. Simon nods his head and pulls out a combat knife, holding it low at his side before opening the door. 

The descent to the lobby is relatively easy, you walk over the undead that have already been taken care of in the stairwell.

“I took care of these already,” he explains without you even having to ask, helping you jump over a pile of 3 zombies at the foot of the stairs. 

“You got more kills under your belt than me,” you comment, mostly in jest to lighten your mood.

Simon huffs under his breath, slowly pushing open the door to the lobby, “You have no idea.”

You squint and turn off your flashlight when you step into the well lit lobby. The sun is now above the horizon, allowing you to see with ease once again. 

Simon remains in front of you, making your way to the double front doors. You peek around him, heart racing in your chest as your grip on your weapon tightens.

“Are you ready?” he asks, casting a glance over his shoulder.

“No…” you confess, shuffling closer to him.

“Everything will be okay,” he promises firmly and you actually believe him. 

When he pushes open the door, the groans of the undead fill your ears and you find your eyes darting frantically around the streets that you can now see with terrifying clarity. 

Hundreds of undead swarm the streets, stumbling and groaning as they shuffle around aimlessly in search of food. Simon reaches down and takes your hand, giving it a reassuring squeeze. You know it’s going to be the fight of your life but with Simon by your side, you have faith that you’re going to make it through and find somewhere safe together.

 property of rowarn; do not modify, repost, or translate.

[princessbrunette]

zombie au rafe who comes to get his revenge but only finds sweet little doe eyed you begging him not to hurt you and he doesnt know what to do with himself<333 he would be so big bad and scary until he took one look at your teary eyes and and

-🐙

i think he’d wanna manipulate u. seduce u into turning against your people and being his mole on the inside that can help him. stroking your tearful cheek with the back of his finger as he looks down on u, all big n scary with his gun tucked in his waistband and his men stood behind him obediently …..

“you know what you did, beautiful?”

“w—what?”

“sided with the pogues. now that’s—” he shakes his head, squinting. “thats bad. you’re not bad right? don’t side with murderers do you?”

“they’re not—”

“i’m talking, alright princess?”

[emoboymeow]

Apocalypse!AU

a little addition. In my AU, Riddle sews a pocket for each of his students, and here he sews pockets on Ace and Deuce's outerwear 🌹

[arcane-vagabond]

Hatchet "Hatch"

Story: We Abide (Apocalypse!AU)

Love Interest: Tyler Owens

The world should have been more prepared. Humanity had faced countless bouts of pestilence that threatened their very existence, and they had gotten good at beating each and every one thrown at them.

That's why no one had taken the new disease seriously, not until it was far too late. Your best friend, Kate Carter, had volunteered her services across the country, setting off for the distant west while you remained in New York City, doing what you could to survive. And then things had gotten worse, and you hadn't heard from Kate before all communication lines went dead. Now, with the world in shambles, you've taken it upon yourself to find your best friend, trekking up and down what used to be the United States of America. You have no idea where your best friend is, but you're determined to find her with the help of your loyal companion, Mars, and a smarmy newcomer who insists on accompanying you.

[paintlavillered]

….now kiss🥹👉👈

bleeding blue | apocalypse au

part eighteen —other parts

pairing: Simon “Ghost” Riley x fem!reader words: 3.3k tags: death. blood. cannibalism mention. zombies of course. AFAB reader. single dad ghost. there will be sex but it isn’t here yet. slow burn!!! enemies to lovers. summary: After losing your companions, you run into a skull-masked man and his daughter. They are your last hope for survival.

Over the next four days, you find yourself panting in exhilaration each morning you spar with Ghost. Every slam of your hand into his ribs feels strangely better than the last. He goes harder on you. He'd been holding back, too, apparently— an unfortunate fact for your ribs. The pain seems to motivate you more, even if he is still beating the shit out of you.

Blue also motivates you. "Hit his nose again!"

Of course, that is the one part of him you purposely avoid.

The sun returns and sweat glides down your face. You knee his stomach. It's less vulnerable than swinging a kick, but still, he attempts to grab you by the waist. You quickly skirt away, the ground firmer beneath your feet, only for his hand to latch onto one of your braids, instead. A sting pulses through your scalp as he tugs hard, wrenching your ear close to his mouth.

"Quicker. Good. But don't get too cocky."

"I thought you wanted me to be more confident," you retort between ragged breaths. 

"Yes, but you can't forget who has the advantage here." There is the slightest bit of arrogance in his voice that makes your teeth grit.

"How could I ever forget?" Your head tilts and he releases the braid. Suddenly, the thought of smacking his nose again doesn’t seem so bad.

His eyebrow quirks. "Get some water, Twix. You need it."

The water caresses your tongue as you gulp it down without abandon. Unsurprisingly, Blue has disappeared somewhere in the treetops. The lack of more broken bones has waned her interest.

When Ghost lifts his mask to drink, you steal a glance at his nose, noticing that the swelling has gone down significantly. The fact he is still wearing that thing with a broken nose upholds your theory that he is at least slightly insane— as if the fact that he once shoved a gun into your fresh wound wasn’t already evidence of that.

Out of nowhere, he materializes beside you and places a hand on your stomach. Your sore muscles spasm under the surprise of his touch, his long fingers stretching from one side of your ribs to the other.

"Your strength starts here,” he explains in a hoarse murmur. “Keep it tight and you will deliver more damage."

You purse your lips to hide a wince and tap your nose. "Don’t I already deliver enough damage?"

"The nose is fragile. You may be landing more hits on me, but I still hardly feel a thing from them."

He allows you to pry his hand off, but the pressure of it seems to linger. Ghost studies you in a way that turns you translucent before demanding, "Lift your shirt, Twix."

Exhaling through your nose, you hesitate before peeling it up, revealing the collection of bruises you have earned from him. A myriad of pink, purple, and yellow skin flares up under his gaze. They have been giving you a hard time lacing your boots and tying your hair in the morning, but once you get moving, the ache becomes easier to ignore.

He has already seen your stomach and more, yet, your skin itches from the exposure. You shove the shirt back down.

His expression shifts. "You should have said something."

"They're just bruises. I'm not bleeding or anything."

"Still."

"Still what?"

He looks irritated. "You need to fucking communicate."

"I don't see why it matters. No coddling, right?"

"That doesn't mean I'm interested in breaking you."

You jerk your chin up to meet his stare. “You won't."

Blue swings down from a tree, plopping between the two of you and unintentionally—thankfully—putting an end to the subject. "I'm glad you two are finally getting along. It's good for the team." She nudges her dad. "But are you done with her yet? You can't just hog Twix all to yourself."

He clears his throat and the air between your bodies breathes wider. "If you're getting bored maybe we need to find something for you to practice."

"Nope!" she says quickly. "Not bored at all." 

He nods to a tree. "Go on. Practice your knives. You haven't done that in a while. Then, you can have her."

With a groan, she trudges away. 

The sparring continues.

Ghost's fists soften by a smidge.

"He annoys the shit out of me sometimes."

Blue rips up a tuft of grass as you inch back to admire the swipe of color on her eyelids. It was her idea to use the bold-colored flowers for makeup— just like the models in her magazines. You did your best to mash the petals and mix them with some creekwater, but the result is kind of patchy and not nearly as smooth as the stuff you used to put on years ago. 

"Hold still. I'm doing your cheeks next."

The sun highlights the splash of freckles on her cheeks and you try to recall if Ghost had them. Her nose is nothing like his. A dainty button. Another trait she must've gotten from her mom. 

"Did you used to wear makeup?" she asks curiously, eyelashes fluttering down. 

"Sometimes. Especially when I went out."

"Went out where?"

Concentration nudges between your brows. "To clubs and stuff. It's where people would... dance."

Her lips spread as she cocks her head to the side in a manner that emulates her dad. You have to remind her again to stop moving. “Oh. Sorry. You danced?"

"I mean, not good dancing. Just dancing for fun,” you murmur, shrugging at the faint memories of being sandwiched between strangers, alcohol flowing through your veins rather than fear and adrenaline. Back then, mornings were spent nursing a hangover before class rather than earning bruises from an ex-lieutenant. 

Humor dances in her eyes when they reopen. "I don't think Ghost ever went to a club. I cannot imagine him dancing."

The images in your mind morph into something utterly laughable— him standing there like an immovable tank as people try to dance around him. "No, probably not."

"He never really tells me about his life before shit happened," she says thoughtfully. 

This piques your curiosity, but you keep your voice light. "No?"

"Well, he tells me the simple stuff. Mostly about his job. But never... never the small things, you know? Like I have no idea what he used to do for fun or what his life was like when he was a kid." She pauses a moment before adding, "He had a brother. That much I know."

You glance up. "Had?"

"He died before the virus. His mom and dad, too. But every time I ask how they died, he just says," she deepens her voice, "'Doesn't matter how, kid. Dead is dead.'"

"Oh, um, yeah, that sounds like something he would say." You tap your fingers under her chin. "I can put some on your lips, too."

Her eyes close again as she puckers her lips out. When you're done, she continues. "He also never talks about my mom." Her face twists. “I think he thinks talking about her will hurt my feelings."

For a few seconds, you struggle to find a response. The rare mention of her mom always makes your heart stutter, but this time, your broken, callused hand reaches out to brush a strand of hair behind her ear.

"It's okay to feel hurt, you know."

Blue shrugs and looks up at the cobalt sky. "I don't think I remember her enough to feel that hurt anymore. She feels so... far away. I remember small things, like the sound of her voice and her old apartment where I lived, but sometimes I wonder if I am making up those memories, you know what I mean?"

"Yeah, I know what you mean." A terrible urge sits on your tongue to ask her more about her mom, about what exactly her relationship was like with Ghost, but Blue changes the subject before you can.

"Does the makeup look good?" A shy blush clouds her cheeks.

You stand up with a faint smile. "I think I did pretty damn good. Come on. I want you to go look in the mirror."

Music.

It pounds so hard you feel it in your chest.

Neon walls enclose you as someone touches your backside, dancing against you. There is a man's voice in your ear that you think you recognize but it's hard to hear him through all the laughing and chatter. Your hair falls in loose curls down your back, free of braids, and you swipe it from your sweaty skin before excusing yourself to the bathroom.

You push through the people. The narrow hall is shrouded with different doors... so many doors. Where is the bathroom? It must be a Friday night on Oxford Street with how fucking crowded and stuffy this place is. Someone knocks into you roughly and your footsteps quicken. A sense of urgency drags you into the next door you come across, a large one made of grey oak.

The smell is horrendous but you feel relieved to see urinals and stalls. Immediately, you press into the granite counter and grip the edge as you catch your breath. The scratched, warped mirror houses a face covered in makeup. Youthful eyes. Flushed cheeks. How much have you had to drink? You need to go home. You will pee and then go home, you tell yourself. Over and over, you repeat this as you relieve yourself in one of the graffiti-doused stalls where condom and tampon wrappers crinkle beneath your heels.

When you're done, you try for the large door you came through, but it doesn't budge. The muffled music outside has faded. Panic sears your chest. You press your back against the door. The bathroom has changed. The stalls are gone. The walls feel like they are closing in, and the smell of piss turns into something even worse. You are alone. Where is the man you came with? You look down. Dead bodies. Strewn limbs. You're standing on a pile of them.

You start screaming. Banging on the door. Digging your fingers into the wood until the flesh rubs down to bone. 

It's not a room anymore, but a box. The fluorescent lights replaced by sheer darkness.

The edges of the door disappear.

A sickening silence replaces your screams.

And then—

"Twix."

You sit up, wild-eyed. You grip onto something—fabric—and a foul taste travels up your throat without warning. You heave several times, your entire body shuddering. 

When awareness settles in, you wipe your mouth and blink up. Ghost. He is... here. Hovering over you. His shirt is tightly bunched between your fingers and you have just vomited into it. The realization smacks you awake and you recoil sharply, staring at his moonlit mask with an expression that must be just short of mortified.

"I... Fuck. I am so sorry. I don't know why— I just..."

When you dare to look at the mess you've left on him, you nearly vomit again. Hands shaking, you rub at your clammy face and begin to ramble unthinkingly as his stare flickers between you and his soiled shirt.

"I've been trying so hard not to hold back like you said, but I think it is fucking me up a little and letting out some things— memories, I guess. I was pretty good about keeping it all in my box because I've been too tired to even think about it, but now I just..." You trail off, realizing your words must make little sense. 

"You've certainly let something out," he rasps.

Your hands drop against the sofa and you cringe. "I'll wash it for you. I'm sorry."

"Stop apologizing."

You inhale. "I just fucking threw up on you."

"I'm aware."

Ghost straightens. He pinches the collar of his shirt and carefully hoists it over his head. Then, you're looking at his bare chest. Slivers of moonlight caress rigid brawn and mountainous scars that capture your gaze for a few heartbeats before you tear it away. 

"I'll, um, hang it outside and... wash it in the morning." 

Your legs are unnervingly steady when you stand up and take the shirt from him, carefully grabbing it by a dry spot. You are relieved to get away from him, draping it over the porch and swallowing gulps of fresh air before you go back inside, praying he's gone back to bed.

Luckily, he has. When the empty living room greets you, you sink to the sofa and palm your eyes. Then, you notice something left on the pillow. A cigarette. You pick it up and recall the few times you smoked whenever your friends offered one. The taste never sat well with you. 

You rummage for your lighter. The first inhale burns terribly, but you cough into the pillow and try again. It starts to calm you down after a few times, and only when you've gotten to the butt of it do you go back to sleep.

"No wonder you're not getting stronger if you throw up like that every night."

Not even five minutes into training the next morning he brings it up. The rest of your sleep ended abruptly when he got you up at an unearthly time, probably to avoid having Blue as an audience. You are too winded to even scowl, your fists held tight in front of your face as you try to predict where he will aim next.

"I told you. That was the first night in a while." 

"Right. Something about a box, huh?"

"Can we just forget about it, please?"

"Hard to forget when my shirt still smells."

"I washed it the best I could."

The next dodge has your head flying down fast enough to undo one of your braids. Hair slips over your face and you huff, holding your hand up. "Hold on. Give me a minute."

As you undo the other one and opt for shoving your hair into a tight bun instead, he watches you strangely. The feel of his stare ignites a spark of irritation and you flash him a sideways glance. "Look, thank you for the cigarette and everything else you have ever done for me, but you can stop looking at me like that. Like you... pity me. I'm not going to break, I'm not going to ask you to kill me again. Everyone left in this world has nightmares and mine probably aren't the worst of them."

"I don't pity you," he says. "I am just trying to understand you."

"Why?" You finish the bun and drop your arms awkwardly at your sides. 

"It's important to understand your ally."

"Oh. Is that what we are?"

His eyes narrow. "Obviously. I wouldn't bother wasting my time with this every day if we weren't."

"Good to know you aren't doing it because you owe me."

"You know what I mean, Twix," he growls. 

"No, I don't." You throw your arms up. "I don't know what you mean and I don't know why you never killed me because you had every reason to, and I definitely don't understand you, so I guess we make terrible allies, Ghost."

"What is with you?" He cocks his head to the side, tone mild with curiosity. "So talkative all of the sudden."

"I have no problem talking when the other person isn't blatantly ignoring me."

His brows lift. "Fair enough."

A deep inhale flares your nostrils before you spread your stance. "I'm ready now."

Despite your claim of readiness, he quickly backs you into a defensive position that has you frustrated once again. You don't understand why, but your progress slips. You keep having to adjust your stance and all of your attempts to hit him fail. It's not long before he locks you against a tree with a tattooed forearm against your neck. 

"You aren't focused today," he accuses.

"Damn, you're observant," you breathe out. 

"Jesus fucking Christ. If I wanted to listen to someone mouthing off, I'd get Blue out here." He presses a bit harder and your throat twitches. "I'm not going to threaten you anymore, but clearly, you think straighter when you channel your anger, so whatever you were dreaming about last night— get it out of your head."

He's right. You breathe deep and try sorting through everything in your head, focusing on just the anger, but it's like fishing in murky water. When he releases you, more of the same happens. This time, you end up on your butt. Ghost glares down at you, circling like a vulture.

"You were doing good the past few days. What the hell is this?"

"I told you," you say through your teeth, brushing off the dirt from your jeans. "Letting out my anger means letting everything else in the box out and it is... confusing me. Making my head fuzzy, I guess."

His chest expands with a deep breath and his pointed stare turns meticulous. "Explain this box to me."

You hesitate for a moment. "It's just... where I put away all of the shit that would otherwise make me insane."

"And what is wrong with being a little insane, Twix? This world is insane. Might as well match it."

Your mouth opens, then closes. You struggle for an answer and rub your temples. "I don't know. Being insane means losing myself completely. I mean, I have already changed so much in the past five years. Like I said, I was never meant to be this person."

"What person? A person who survives? A person who does what she has to?"

"A person who hurts others," you grit out. "A person who kills." 

"You've killed people, right?" he roughly asks and you nod. "Then you're a killer. You were always meant to be a killer. End of story." His words strike you, and you begin to shake your head defensively, but he continues before you can muster a reply. "The past five years haven't changed you, they have revealed who you are. Now—" he raises his fists, "—open the stupid box and turn everything you feel into anger. All of it. It is valuable fuel that will continue to keep you alive."

He swings.

A kaleidoscope of long-ignored memories flashes through your brain when he hits your sore stomach. Your family. Your friends. The life stolen from you. 

And then— you recover your footing and slam a boot into his knee. It loosens his stance just enough for you to throw yourself at him, effectively knocking him over. The ground welcomes your bodies again, but this time, you grip his shoulders and wind up on top, practically laying all of your weight on him. A few harsh breaths expel from your nose before you become fully aware of the position, the heat from his chest pressing into your breasts.

Quickly, you splay your hands flat against him and sit up straight, thighs spread over his narrow hips. Ghost could easily flip you over and pin you if he wanted. But instead, he crosses his arms behind his head. 

"Comfortable?" you ask him breathlessly, raising a brow.

"Quite. Though, if this were real, I suggest an elbow to the neck once you've got them down."

"So you admit it, then. I got you down."

"I allowed it."

"Sure." Your teeth snag on your lip and you lightly brush a finger over his masked nose, detecting a tick in the hinge of his jaw. "Then I will 'allow' you to keep this for now, but next time, I might do more than just break it."

His eyes widen imperceptibly before he quickly recovers. "Ah. So you are a person who hurts others, then. Someone was trying to tell me otherwise."

Your lips twitch at the corner on their own accord. "Shut the fuck up."

He simply stares at you for a pregnant pause before clearing his throat. "I did allow it, but that was good. You focused on the anger, didn't you?"

You nod. "Yeah, I did. Is that what you do all the time?" you ask curiously. "Just get angry and kill people?"

"Pretty much."

By the tone of his voice, a deep brass that reverberates through all the places your bodies touch, you are certain he's joking. Realizing that you are still on top of him, you push off his chest and swing a leg over, careful not to knee his face or let him see the deep flush that crawls over every inch of your skin.